Ishwarya Techno Solutions

CAPITALIZATION GUIDELINES

Capitalization has always been a nagging question especially for the early beginners of transcription. Here we discuss some basic rules of capitalization that are to be kept in mind when transcribing medical reports:

Capitalize all the proper nouns-This includes names of a person, place, organization, languages, countries, races, days of the week, and months.

For example:

Capitalize brand names of drugs and not their generic names. 

For example:

• aspirin (generic) should be small unless the sentence starts with it. Ecotrin (brand name)

As discussed earlier, capitalize the words building, center, room, only when they accompany a proper noun or are part of the official name, otherwise not.

For example:

• Washington State Building
  The patient was taken to Mercy Medical Center.

Capitalize eponyms, but do not capitalize the adjectives, prefixes, and common nouns that accompany them. Also, do not capitalize the nouns, adjectives, and verbs derived from eponyms.

For example:

• non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
• Parkinson’s disease
• red rubber Robinson catheter
• parkinsonism
• pasteurized milk

All Acronyms are transcribed in upper-case letters (capitalized) except for a few, like wbc, rbc.

For example:

• CABG from coronary artery bypass grafting.
• COPD from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
  However, in abbreviated form (like S aureus, H pylori), the genus is capitalized.

Capitalize compass directions (east, west, north, south) when part of the geographic name, otherwise not.

For example:

• East Africa
• South Korea
  His house is in the west where the dark men reign.

Capitalize name of religious holidays and festivals.

For example:

• Thanksgiving
• Memorial Day
• Christmas Day
• New Year Day

Always capitalize sociocultural designations like races, religions.

For example:

• Spanish
• African-American
• Hispanic
• Caucasian
• Methodist