Capitalization

PATH uses title case for Board of Directors and Executive Team. The shortened forms are board and ET.

Use title case for PATH division, department, and team names—but not for the words division, department, and team (e.g., Medical Devices and Health Technologies department). One exception is the Executive Team.

In most cases, lowercase the word government when it is used as a noun or adjective: US government, government of Kenya, UK government agencies. However, there may be certain contexts or audiences for which government should be capitalized (e.g., in a grant proposal to a government or when a more formal tone is required).

Use title case for official job titles. Use lowercase for occupational descriptions. Use a comma only when the job title or description comes after the name:

• Official job title before name: Chief Programs & Innovation Officer Kammerle Schneider.
• Name, official job title: Kammerle Schneider, Chief Programs & Innovation Officer.
• Occupational description before name: head of programs and innovation Kammerle Schneider.
• Name, occupational description: Kammerle Schneider, head of programs and innovation.

Capitalize Ministry of Health when it refers to a specific ministry (e.g., Kenya Ministry of Health) even if the country name is not directly before it (e.g., our team in Kenya worked with the Ministry of Health). Use lowercase when the term is plural (e.g., the Senegal and Zambia ministries of health) or general (e.g., the ministry of health in each country). The abbreviation for Ministry of Health is MOH (all caps). When referring to two or more ministries of health, it is best to spell out ministries of health or health ministries rather than use MOHs. The exception is in documents with tight word counts.

Use an uppercase P in Phase when describing a clinical trial (e.g., Phase 3 clinical trial).

Capitalize directional adjectives when they are part of a proper name (e.g., South Africa, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia). Do not capitalize terms such as northern Africa, eastern Asia, and central Asia. Capitalize the words district, province, region, and state when they are part of the formal name (e.g., Sunsari District, Washington State) but note: district of Sunsari, state of Washington. Retain the capital letter when referring to two or more political divisions of the same type (e.g., Monduli and Hai Districts).

Capitalize project only when it is part of the official project name.

In general, use sentence case for headings and subheadings within a document. Title case may be used, but PATH style favors sentence case. In sentence-case style for headings and subheadings, only the first word, proper nouns, and the word following a colon are capitalized (e.g., Malaria portfolio projects: Vaccines, diagnostics, and drugs).

In general, use title case for titles and subtitles on a cover page (although sentence case may be used). In title case, all words except articles (i.e., a, an, the), conjunctions (e.g., and, but, or), and prepositions (e.g., at, by, for, in, of) are capitalized, and a few special rules apply:

• All words that are four letters or longer—including prepositions such as from, through, and with—are capitalized.
• To is not capitalized unless it is the first word in the title—even when it is part of an infinitive.
• The second word in a compound adjective is capitalized (e.g., Long-Term), but the word that follows a prefix is not (e.g., Pre-assessment).
• Use lowercase for species names.
• Capitalize all verbs, including two-letter verbs (e.g., is).