Earlier this week, someone ended up on my website searching for the phrase “Do you capitalize dad”. Although that’s not a frequent search phrase used by my website visitors, I thought it would make a good topic for this week’s blog post.
So, do you capitalize dad? Well, in short, no.
There are actually (pretty much) only 3 times to capitalize a word:
- Proper nouns (like Canada, Jane, and Saskatchewan)
- First word in a sentence
- Main words in a title
Dad isn’t a proper noun. Take the following sentence, for example:
Susan, I’d like to introduce my dad, George, to you.
In this sentence, George is the proper noun. Dad is simply a common noun.
Now, if dad was the first word in a sentence, of course it would be capitalized, like in this example:
Dads should love their children’s mothers.
Finally, if dad is part of the title of a work, like a book or film, then it would be capitalized.
My Two Dads
So, if dad is the first word in a sentence or part of a title, then by all means capitalize it. Any other time, just leave it lowercase.
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If you have a grammar question, email it to me at kim.siever@hotppper.ca, and I will answer it here.
