Turning Off Capital Corrections

Word tries its level best to be a good guesser at what you are attempting to do. For instance, as you are typing along, if you type a word where the first two letters are uppercase, and the next letter is lowercase, Word will figure you just have slow fingers and didn't release the Shift key in time to make the second letter lowercase. So, it dutifully changes the second letter to lowercase to help you out. For instance, the word PLace becomes Place.

There are some situations where this behavior can be bothersome, however. For instance, you may have a company or product name in which the first two letters are always capitalized, such as INtec or MYphone. In these cases, Word also tries to do its magic and change the capitalization, which can cause no end to proofreading passes and related problems.

One solution to this problem is to turn off the correction that Word does to what you type. (At least for this particular capitalization issue.) Here's how you do it:

1. Display the Word Options dialog box. (In Word 2007 click the Office button and then click Word Options. In Word 2010, Word 2013, or Word 2016, display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
2. Click Proofing at the left side of the dialog box, and then click AutoCorrect Options. Word displays the AutoCorrect dialog box.
3. Make sure the AutoCorrect tab is displayed. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The AutoCorrect tab of the AutoCorrect dialog box.

4. Clear the Correct TWo INitial Capitals check box.
5. Click OK to dismiss the AutoCorrect dialog box.
6. Click on Cancel to dismiss the Word Options dialog box.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (6071) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Word in Microsoft 365, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Turning Off Capital Corrections.