Language Arts Grade Five

Unit Twelve, Lesson Two: Capitalization

  1. bright
  2. sight
  3. fight
  4. light
  5. tight
  6. chew
  7. swallow
  8. diet
  9. hungry
  10. appetite
  1. desire
  2. nutrient
  3. vitamin
  4. prospect
  5. claim
  6. stomach
  7. intestine
  8. digestion
  9. abdomen
  10. invest
Capitalization

Of course, you know that you should capitalize the first letter of a sentence, but there are exceptions. For instance, consider this sentence: 


  mRNA is transcribed in the nucleus and translated in the cytoplasm.
You probably don't know anything about mRNA at this point in your life, but if you need to write this abbreviation at the beginning of a sentence, don't capitalize the m! This sort of makes mRNA a rule-breaker. It is definitely an exception to the normal rule that you capitalize at the beginning of a sentence.

mRNA, by the way, stands for messenger RNA. The RNA part stands for ribonucelic acid. You will learn about the different kinds of RNAs in biology sometime in the future.

Getting back to capitalization: What's wrong with this sentence? 


  Jill spent the weekend in utah.
This should be easy! Utah is a state and all states are proper nouns and all proper nouns should be capitalized. Therefore, the word Utah, should be capitalized.

You should recall that proper nouns are nouns which name specific persons, places, or things by their name. Here are a few examples of proper nouns: 



	Jill			Utah			Nevada

	Elko			Las Vegas		Boundary Peak

	Mount Charleston	Fred's Market		Mr. Jones

Click here to go to next page