Are you suffering from RCS (Random Capitalisation Syndrome)?

Here at Bid Perfect we read many bids (and other examples of business writing) each day. There are recurring issues that appear in most of the texts we read. All the usual suspects crop up regularly, such as non-sequiturs, tautologies and oxymorons but the oddest of them is probably the Random Capitalisation of words, for no apparent reason.

Take a look at this paragraph:

Are You suffering from Random Capitalisation Syndrome? A few members of the Bid Writing community appears to be! My Father and Mother often do when they write emails to me. So, ask Yourself again: Do You? Editors and Proofreaders will tell you that some Business Writers think there are far more words that need Capitalising than is ACTUALLY the case. Sometimes, it just seems appropriate to capitalise words (or phrases) like, for example, Public Sector or Government. At other times, there appears to be no Rationale whatsoever for Capitalising Words. It often seems that there is No consistency, No specific Rules being followed and No actual understanding of this aspect of grammar.

If you can see nothing wrong with this paragraph, then you may be suffering from RCS.

When we challenge writers on this subject, they will sometimes become defensive, and accuse us of being pedants or ‘Grammar Nazis’ (a favourite with many critics). Well, perhaps it is so, but our experience is that the reader makes the decision as to whether random capitalisation is acceptable, not the writer. In other words, it is the job of the writer to write correctly, without spraying capital letters everywhere. If the reader spots unrequired capital letters, they might ignore it. On the other hand, they might be Grammar Nazis and make a negative judgement of the writer.

If you would like to explore the wonderful world of capitalisation, try this link to a starter guide from the Campaign for Plain English. https://www.plainenglish.co.uk/files/capitalletters.pdf

Good Luck!