
Tips.Net > WordTips Home > Editing > Capitalizing the First Letter after a Colon
Summary: There are many rules in English grammar (and many exceptions to those rules.) One common rule of grammar is to capitalize the first letter appearing after a colon, provided that what follows the colon could stand on its own as a sentence. Word does not include a way to do this capitalization automatically (too many grammatical exceptions to make a hard-and-fast rule), but you can create your own macro that will take care of the capitalization for you. (This tip works with Microsoft Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, Word 2003, and Word 2007.)
Becca asked if there is a way to create a default setting so that the first letter following a colon will always be a capital letter. Unfortunately there is no built-in way to do this in Word. You can, however, create a macro that can be used to step through your document and make sure that each lowercase letter following a colon (and a space) is converted to uppercase.
Sub CapsAfterColon()
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = ": ([a-z])"
.Replacement.Text = ": \1"
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = True
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = True
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute
While Selection.Find.Found
Selection.Range.Case = wdUpperCase
Selection.Collapse direction:=wdCollapseEnd
Selection.Find.Execute
Wend
End Sub
The macro uses a wildcard search to find instances of a colon followed by a space and a lowercase letter. For each instance found, the text is converted to uppercase. The macro searches for and changes the case of all such instances in the document.
Tip #3461 applies to Microsoft Word versions: 97 2000 2002 2003 2007
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