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Standard Casing Rules for English Language Menus
Standard Casing Rules for English Language Menus

The rules for capitalization

Willa Cary avatar
Written by Willa Cary
Updated over 5 years ago

Some menus have casing mistakes in their text or use an unusual style of casing for design purposes. 

In general, when you use the OCR tool in Woflow, the correct casing will be applied. 

There are 2 types of casing and special rules around proper nouns. All menus for restaurants based in the U.S. should use the following standard for casing:

TITLE CASING

Woflow follows the Associated Press (AP) writing style, capitalizing all words in the title except for the following:

  • Articles: a, an, the (unless its at the beginning of the title)

  • Conjunctions: or, nor, so, yet, but

  • Prepositions: as, at, by, for, in, of, on, per, to, with

Examples of CORRECT casing for Titles:

  • Modelo and a Shot of Well Tequila

  • Burger of the Day

  • Hard-Boiled Farm Egg

  • Cold Buckwheat Soba with Mochi Tempura

Examples of INCORRECT casing for Titles:

  • Charcuterie And Things

  • Seasonal Soup Of The Day

  • French fries

  • Grass-fed Flatiron Steak

SENTENCE CASING

Per AP style, Woflow will always capitalize the first word of the sentence and all proper nouns.

Example of CORRECT casing for descriptions:

  • “Created by a North Mexican head waiter-called Nacho, of course. Ours have black bean chili, Monterey Jack, guacamole, sour cream, jalapeños and chipotle.”

  • “2 deep fried waffles, Nutella, graham crackers, marshmallows, Hershey chocolate & vanilla ice cream.”

  • “Pepperoni, Italian sausage, salami, linguica & ground beef.”

Example of INCORRECT casing for descriptions: 

  • "We'll make it for you. Happy hour special: free Fries & soda for all speciality sandwiches: monday-Friday 4pm-7pm & Fri & sat 2am-4am."

  • "Sweet fries, double bacon, syrup, sea salt, Garlic, shallots & chives."

  • "Fireball whiskey, jack Daniels & sour mix."

The first word should always be capitalized, as well as proper nouns. Please note that proper nouns (see next section about proper nouns) should still be capitalized in any sentences.

PROPER NOUNS

A noun that names a particular person, place, or thing” - Merriam Webster Dictionary

The rules of proper nouns:

  • “Mary”: this is the name of a person, so it is a proper noun;

  • “Paris”: this is the name of a place, so it is a proper noun;

  • “Tuesday”: this is the name of a thing, so it is a proper noun.

Proper nouns should always be capitalized, even if they are not capitalized in the menu text. Here are some proper noun we commonly see mistakes with:

MENUS IN NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGES

Menus written in non-English languages should still follow these same guidelines, even though the capitalization rules in other languages tends to be different.

Unless you are transcribing a menu for a restaurant that is located in a non-U.S. country, all U.S. based restaurants should follow the U.S. standard for capitalization.

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