Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Capitalizing the Word "I".
Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated November 8, 2024)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365
William frequently uses Word's command to change case, but he notes that the behavior of the command is (at times) odd. He often wants to end up with "sentence case," with the first letter of the first word of the sentence capitalized and all other letters lowercase. But Word also leaves the word "I" in lower case, when, of course, it should always be capitalized. Therefore, William has to go back through the text and manually capitalize each lowercase "i." He wonders if there is a way around this problem.
The solution, as many people think, isn't in Word's AutoCorrect feature. By default, AutoCorrect includes an option that automatically replaces any lowercase, single-word instances of the letter i with I, as you type.
This isn't an "as you type" situation, however. If you select a sentence and use F3 to cycle through your capitalization options, you end up—before getting to Sentence Case capitalization—going through Lowercase capitalization, which lowercases all the letters including the pronoun "I". When you then choose Sentence Case capitalization, the pronoun remains as lowercase, unless it is the first word in the sentence. This behavior is exhibited regardless of how you have AutoCorrect configured.
The only solution that we've been able to come up with is to us Word's Find and Replace capabilities in a macro to replace all instances of a single-word lowercase i with an uppercase I.
Sub iBecomesI() Selection.WholeStory Selection.Find.ClearFormatting Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting With Selection.Find .Text = "i" .Replacement.Text = "I" .Forward = True .Wrap = wdFindAsk .Format = False .MatchCase = True .MatchWholeWord = True .MatchWildcards = False .MatchSoundsLike = False .MatchAllWordForms = False End With Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll End Sub
The macro can, if desired, be associated with a keyboard shortcut of your choosing so you can use it with your selected sentences rather easily.
Note:
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (7913) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Capitalizing the Word "I".
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2019-09-30 11:24:41
Malcolm Patterson
Note that doing a spell check will flag each instance of a lowercase _I_ and suggest making it uppercase. For those who deal with paragraph numbering systems that include lowercase roman numerals, that gives you a chance to decline the "correction."
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