Capitalize the first letter in lists Usability Guideline

Description

Capitalize the first letter of the first word in lists.

Help

Only the first letter of the first word should be capitalized unless the item contains another word that would normally be capitalized.

Applicable standards

Note: The guidelines.usability.gov website has been down since July 2020, although www.usability.gov is still operating and the PDF version of the guidelines is still available.

Change history

  • 5.27 Oct 2017 Don’t fire for code examples in lists.
  • 5.21 Mar 2016 Don’t fire for navigation lists.
  • 5.2 May 2013 Updated priority to match April 2013 version of guidelines.
  • 5.0 Oct 2012 Don’t fire for product names like iPhone.
  • 4.0 Jun 2010 Only fire in HTML documents.
  • 3.0 Dec 2008 Don’t fire for URLs in bulleted lists.
  • 1.0 Feb 2007 Added.

This page describes a web site issue detected in HTML documents by SortSite Desktop and OnDemand Suite.

Rule ID: UseGov12.9