Capitalization

This page covers letter casing. For preferred word forms, apostrophes, acronyms, and special characters, use Spelling Standards.

Use conventional capitalization. A streaming service or artist-uploaded lyric page may use decorative all-lowercase or all-caps styling; that styling does not override the transcription standard.

Start of a line

Capitalize the first word of every lyric line and the first word inside a parenthetical lyric.

A genuinely lowercase proper name or alias may remain lowercase at the start of a line, such as will.i.am or iPhone.

Proper nouns

Capitalize:

• people, stage names, characters, and groups;

• countries, cities, streets, regions, and recognized geographical names;

• nationalities, languages, religions, and religious titles used as names;

• brands, products, organizations, and events;

• days, months, holidays, and historical periods;

• titles of songs, albums, films, books, and other works.

Use the verified spelling and casing of a name instead of guessing from pronunciation.

Acronyms and initialisms

Write established acronyms in their conventional form: FBI, DNA, VIP, GOAT, and ASAP. Do not lowercase them merely because an artist’s lyric visualizer does.

Some shortened words are ordinary lowercase words rather than acronyms. Meaning decides the form: cream for money but C.R.E.A.M. when naming the song.

Brands and internal capitals

Preserve meaningful internal capitalization in names such as:

• YouTube

• iPhone

• eBay

• PlayStation

All caps and stylized titles

Do not write an entire line in all caps simply because it is shouted. Volume and emphasis are represented by the performance and timing, not decorative casing.

When a lyric names a work whose official title uses unusual styling, prefer normal title capitalization unless the styling is essential to identifying the work. The goal is readable, consistent lyrics rather than reproducing cover art typography.