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I always wonder whether 'today' and 'tomorrow' should be capitalised. Can anybody help me?

JSBձոգչ
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apf
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4 Answers4

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Today and Tomorrow are not capitalized because they are not really names, nor are they proper nouns.

They are capitalized only if they appear at the beginning of a sentence, or if you are making a title for some sort of event such as "The Today News". Otherwise, it is a plain old regular word.

I have written this today and may or may not get an upvote for it tomorrow
:D

waiwai933
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Arjun J Rao
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5

The words today, tomorrow and yesterday are not capitalized.

However, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday are capitalized.

5

The words today and tomorrow are only ever capitalized in titles:

The Today Show (TV program)

Tomorrow Never Knows (Beatles song)

But in everyday speech, these words are left lower-cased:

I'm going to take it easy today. I have a big day tomorrow.

Edit per Christian's comment:

English does not capitalize nouns unless they are so-called proper nouns, by which I do not mean proper in the British sense of being "in order" or "the way a thing should be done," but instead nouns that are used as actual names for people or places or ideas that are represented in titular form. The other variety of nouns are called common nouns, and they refer to everyday things that are not singled out for such special naming. Unlike German, in which every noun is capitalized, common nouns in English are not singled out for special treatment (unless, of course, they come at the beginning of a sentence, or are used as class identifiers in a poetic sense: occasionally you will see truth or beauty written as Truth or Beauty, signifying that these represent special philosophically representative uses of the terms).

Robusto
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"Today" is not a noun (name) pronoun proper noun, unlike "Monday" or "Friday", therefore, no, they're not capitalized. It's akin to "boy" and "Tom" (for example).

Christian
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    Today can be a noun. When I say "Today is going to be a great day", I use today as a noun. Unlike the names for days of the week though, it can be used on any day to refer to "this present day". – Tragicomic Jan 31 '11 at 08:24
  • @Tragicomic - Good point. Maybe it has something to do with the type of noun? – Christian Jan 31 '11 at 09:25
  • I think "important words" in a sentence should be capitalized...but note that not in all cases!! – Muaz Khan Jan 31 '11 at 10:52
  • @Hazro City - That sounds awfully subjective.. – Christian Jan 31 '11 at 10:58
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    Why is "today" in "Today is going to be a great day" any more of a noun deserving capitalization than "this" in "this is going to be a great day"? – RedGrittyBrick Jan 31 '11 at 11:35
  • Um, so boy is not a noun? – RegDwigнt Jan 31 '11 at 11:52
  • @RedGrittyBrick: I was just commenting on on the fact that it is a noun (as opposed to what is said in the answer), not that it should be capitalized. It's capitalized in my example since it was at the beginning of my example sentence:-). – Tragicomic Jan 31 '11 at 12:07
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    About why the names of the days of the week are capitalized unlike, say, the names of seasons, I suspect the answer may lie in the etymology of these names (not sure, though). – Tragicomic Jan 31 '11 at 12:12
  • @RegDwight - boy is not a name. @Tragicomic - A think "name" is the key to the question... – Christian Jan 31 '11 at 12:13
  • @Tragicomic: there's a question for that, though the answer seems to be unclear. – RegDwigнt Jan 31 '11 at 12:15
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    @Christian: my comment was a subtle hint that your answer seems to equate noun and name, which are not the same. The distinction you are looking for is that between common nouns and proper ones. – RegDwigнt Jan 31 '11 at 12:18
  • @RegDwight - Ah, right you are. I'm please to know that at least someone came up with a fully qualified answer. – Christian Jan 31 '11 at 14:51
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    @Christian: thanks for the edit, but pronoun is something different yet again. Me, he, and ours are pronouns; Monday and Friday are not. – RegDwigнt Jan 31 '11 at 14:54
  • @RegDwight - Aw god...I knew I should have taken some coffee this morning! On the upside, I just got an editor badge for all those repeated edits :D – Christian Jan 31 '11 at 15:48