[aalaan]

Agreed about the need for a capital if one should exist anyway, such as 'I'
(that much neglected character) but certainly nor as a matter of course
after a semicolon.

"Terry Farrell" wrote in message
...
To expand on those correct answers: as with all grammar rules, this one
may be broken! The first character following the colon should be
capitalised when a capital is normally demanded. For example, the phrase
following may be a quote that starts with a capital, a proper name follows
or simply 'I'. The rule isn't absolute.

To make matter worse, there are some writing circles that insist on
capitalising after a colon. But that is only in US English and not in
British or International English.

Allen Wyatt who publishes a Word Tips Newsletter, once provided a tip for
capitalising after a colon stating that Word only had a built in tool for
capitalising after a Stop. He genuinely believes that it should capitalise
following a colon too, so he produced a macro tool.

--
Terry Farrell - MS Word MVP

"justme" wrote in message
...
I was just trying to figure out a simple grammar question and could not
find
a way to ask Word 2003 my question. My question is simply:

When I've combined two sentences with a semi-colon, is it proper to
capitalize the first word of the second sentence or not?