Details matter! Grammatical mistakes on your resume, cover letter, and LinkedIn profile can hurt your chances of landing a new job. As someone who's been both a recruiter and a career coach for three decades, I've seen more than my fair share of capitalization faux pas. The article below, adapted from one that appeared in The Muse will guide you through the capitalization maze.

Bullets

The first word of a bullet or sentence should always be capitalized. Starting a sentence with a lowercase letter looks unprofessional.

Proper Nouns and Formal Names

Nouns that represent a specific person, place, or thing are proper nouns and should be capitalized. Proper nouns and names account for most of the capitalization on your resume. For example:

• George Washington

• Fifth Avenue

• Museum of Modern Art

• Europe

• Spanish

Company Names and Software Tools

The names of companies and software tools are proper nouns and should be capitalized unless they’re written in all lowercase letters or all caps by the company itself. Usually, companies only use this kind of unorthodox styling for logos, but occasionally it carries over into regular text.

Do you use Microsoft Excel? Adobe Photoshop? Make sure they’re capitalized, whether they appear within a bullet or are listed in a skills section. Look up the name of a software program, write it the same way the company does. Make sure you also pay attention to caps in the middle of a name, or lowercase letters at the start, like:

• JavaScript

• iPhone

Cities and States

Always capitalize cities and states when you list your location in your contact info and the location of a company or school. Make sure to also abbreviate states. For company info, for example, you might write:

Acme Industries | Seattle, WA

Click here for an official list of state abbreviations from the USPS.

Roles, Departments, and Teams

These should be lowercase in most places on your resume, including within your resume summary (if you’re using one) as well as your bullets or other descriptions of work experience, education, volunteer work, and more. So, you’d write:

• Scheduled social media content as a marketing coordinator with Acme Industries.

The only exceptions are when you name your role at the start of a job entry and if you’re putting a title at the top as a resume headline. For example:

Acme Industries, Marketing Coordinator (January 2014–July 2017)

The same goes for departments and teams. If you’re listing out departments you worked with, you don’t need to capitalize those. This is one of the most common mistakes I see. For example:

• Collaborated with Engineering, Marketing, and Sales to make product improvements that incorporated customer feedback.

is not correct because those department names are not proper nouns. The correct way to write it is:

• Collaborated with engineering, marketing, and sales to make product improvements that incorporated customer feedback.

General Industry Sectors

Do you work in the pharmaceutical industry? Keep it lowercase when you’re writing about industry experience. So, at the start of a resume summary, you might say:

Project manager with experience in the pharmaceutical, medical device, and biotechnology industries.

Rather than:

Project manager with experience in the Pharmaceutical, Medical Device, and Biotechnology industries.

Time Words

Seasons are not proper nouns and should only be capitalized if they are at the beginning of a sentence or you’re listing a season as your dates of employment. But days of the week and months should always be capitalized because they’re proper nouns.

Here are two ways to list dates of employment at the top of a job or internship entry:

September 2019–present

Summer 2020

But if you’re referencing a project you completed in the spring of 2021, resist the temptation to write “Spring 2021.”

• Completed a major software implementation in spring 2021.

Education and Institutions

Always capitalize the name of a university or learning institution. For example, no matter where on your resume you mention it, you’d capitalize the first letter of each word in, say, Harvard University, Michigan State University, or University of California, Irvine. 

But if you’re using the word “university” in a sentence by itself, it shouldn’t be capitalized. For example:

• Oversaw outreach to 30+ university partners to build a robust internship program.

Degrees and Fields

At the start of your education entries, capitalize the degree you earned (e.g., Bachelor of Arts, Master of Science). But like the name of a role, you don’t need to capitalize degrees if you’re mentioning them within a bullet or elsewhere (e.g., bachelor’s degree). You can also always use the abbreviated version, which gets the appropriate capital letters no matter where it appears (e.g., MA, JD, PhD).

Similar rules apply to subjects and fields as to roles and degrees: When listing your education entries, you should capitalize the subject or field you studied. Here are a couple of examples:

New York University
MA, English Literature

University of Texas
Bachelor of Science, Sociology

However, if you choose to list completed coursework with your degree or otherwise mention subjects you studied or researched, the fields wouldn’t be capitalized—unless they include a proper noun or name of a language or country:

• Completed coursework in comparative literature, American studies, French, and history.

Initialisms and Acronyms

If you use an initialism (pronounced as letters) or acronym (pronounced as a word), make sure you spell it out first, and then add the shortened version in all caps in parentheses to ensure you get through an applicant tracking system (ATS). Here are a couple of examples:

• Acted as subject matter expert (SME) in a complex software implementation.

• Used search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to improve website visibility and increase traffic to the site.

Even if an initialism or acronym is widely recognized—most people would immediately know what NASA refers to, for instance—there’s still a chance an ATS won’t recognize it. Spell it out first and then you can use the abbreviation from then on.

All Caps

The only other times I suggest using all caps on a resume, besides abbreviations, is for your name at the very top of the page and for section headings. It’s a personal preference, but I like the look and it helps those sections stand out. For example, you might make your section headings:

EXPERIENCE vs. Experience

EDUCATION vs. Education

SKILLS vs. Skills

Remember, folks, the little things matter, especially when you're crafting your resume. Capitalization might seem like a minor issue, but it can make a big difference in how you're perceived by potential employers. Avoiding these common mistakes could make the difference between whether or not you’re invited for an interview. It's all part of ensuring your resume shines brightly. Best of luck with your job hunting!

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