Capital Gains: Effects of Word Class and Sentence Position on Capitalization Use Across Age.

ABSTRACT: Learning to capitalize in English requires identifying a word's type and sentence position. In two cloze studies (2021-2022), Australian students of all genders (95% White, monolingual) spelled words with one and two capitalization cues (proper nouns, sentence-initial words) and no-cue control words. High school (12-18 years, n = 59) and university students (18-63 years, n = 78) exhibited near-perfect capitalization. Primary school students (8-12 years) writing single words (n = 99) used proper-noun cues more than sentence-initial cues (ds > 0.49), but when writing consecutive words (n = 101), capitalized more accurately with two cues than one (ds > 0.32). Early capitalization appears better with more cues, but task format influences children's use of grammatical context.

SUBMITTER: Hawkey E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12598439 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov-Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature