Capitalization

In general, we only capitalize things when we need to. Over use of capitalization is distracting and limits accessibility for our readers with vision impairment. Read on for some guidelines on how to decide what to capitalize in a document's title, headings, products, features, and other elements of the page.

Use sentence case in most headings and paragraphs

Use sentence case for headings and in paragraph text. This includes category headings and document titles, particularly blog and docs page titles. Some content types, including UI page titles, reports, and press releases, use title case — defer to the style guidelines of the content type in those cases. With sentence case, capitalize only the first letter of:

• The first word
• Proper nouns
• Acronyms and abbreviations

We have some exceptions:

• If the heading is a code term, such as a variable or function, then capitalize it exactly as it's used in the code; for example: noticeError.
• If the heading includes a colon, follow the Microsoft Style Guide for titles and headings, and capitalize the first word that appears after the colon; for example: APM Error profiles: Troubleshoot trends.

Products and features

For detailed capitalization information and exceptions to the general sentence case guideline, see Product, capability, and feature capitalization and usage. For guidelines for capitalization in the UI, go to the UI writing page on capitalization.

UI elements and UI page paths