Capitals – case by case

The following are terms that are odd or ambiguous enough not to be covered by the general advice. We Google The Economist with these terms and see how it handles them. Please post your own as comments to this entry so that we can include them in the list that follows.

The list

sub-Saharan Africa (The Economist occasionally capitalises the S, but usually doesn’t)

poverty-reduction strategy

Millennium Development Goal

central Europe – the ‘central’ here is a descriptive adjective, as the region covered by the term is vague. The vagueness of these terms in Europe is indicated by the fact that you would tend to write ‘eastern’ or ‘southern’ Europe rather than ‘east’ or ‘south’ Europe.

Central America – the ‘Central’ here is part of the name of a precisely defined area, as with North and South America

the West – the world’s rich democracies

Ltd – after a limited company’s name. Don’t put a point after it – British abbreviations never end in a point if the last letter of the abbreviation is the last letter of the full word.

the pound – currencies are always lower-case

the Internet and the World-Wide Web (or just the Web) are both capitalised