Should functional areas be capitalized?

Question

We are creating a pamphlet which shows Available Functions:

Engineering
Manufacturing
Operations
Finance
Human Resources

Should they all be capitalized, and if so, should "Resources" after Human also be? They will be bulleted.

Thank you for your response Roger. I didn't see an answer in that link only because this is a bulleted list and isn't a title or in a sentence — Laura J, Aug 02 '18 at 19:37
If they're not sentences or sentence fragments, they should probably use title case. — Roger Sinasohn, Aug 02 '18 at 19:41
I apologize; After reading other posts, I'm still not 100% sure which way to go. The beginning of the bullet lists is as follows: Available Functions: Should functions be capitliized? And then should I NOT capitalize engineering, manufacturing, finance, human resources in bulletts — Laura J, Aug 02 '18 at 19:48
Thank you everyone for your kind assistance. After all of your feedback, this is how I will add to the pamphlet: Available functions: (then the following will be bullet points) Engineering Finance Human Resources Information Technology Logistics Quality — Laura J, Aug 02 '18 at 19:59

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 02 '18 at 19:40

You can, of course, do whatever you like, but given that these are, in effect, the titles of various functions (or departments?), then, yes, they would normally be capitalized using what's called Title Case. Wiktionary defines Title Case as the capitalization of text in which the first letter of each major word is set in capital.

You can read more about it in this Grammar Monster article.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 02 '18 at 19:50

Definitely. These areas are specialised enough in your field to qualify as proper nouns: you don't mean just any human resources, you mean your human resources. By capitalising, you assign importance.

It's also a style issue, wherein you may do whatever the deuce you like.

Should functional areas be capitalized?

2 Answers2