I recently edited a memoir in which the narrator’s parents were among the cast of characters. The book was written from a child’s perspective, and Mom and/or Dad — central figures in a child’s life — made appearances on nearly every page. I also made changes to the capitalization of “mom” and “dad” on nearly every page. Sometimes these words were capitalized, and sometimes they were lowercased.
Shortly after I submitted the edits, the client emailed to ask why the capitalization is inconsistent. She didn’t doubt my edits — rather, she wanted to understand why a single word can behave in different ways. It’s a great question, and it’s also a common question. Luckily, the answer is simple. Proper nouns are capitalized and common nouns aren’t. In other words, when “Mom” and “Dad” are used in place of a person’s name, they’re capitalized. When “mom” and “dad” describe a generic parental relationship, they’re lowercased. Here’s an example:
After school, Mom took me to my piano lesson.
After school, my mom took me to my piano lesson.
These sentences are nearly identical. The difference is that “Mom” functions as the parent’s name in the first one whereas “mom” functions as a generic word for “parent” in the second one. You can figure out whether to capitalize by replacing “mom” with her name. If the sentence works with the name inserted, capitalize “Mom” — just like you would if you were using her actual name.
After school, Susan took me to my piano lesson.
The sentence sounds natural, so “Mom” is capitalized since it functions as a person’s name.
After school, my Susan took me to my piano lesson.
The sentence sounds strange, so “mom” needs to be lowercased since it’s not functioning as a person’s name.
This is the same rule we apply when we write “my school” (common noun) vs. “Lincoln High School” (proper noun) or “my teacher” (common) vs. “Mr. Stevenoski” (proper), or “my parents” (common) vs. “Susan and Larry” (proper). For most writers, choosing whether to capitalize is easy in all of these instances; we’d never consider capitalizing the common noun because it’s not a name. Similarly, we wouldn’t consider lowercasing the names since we know that names are always capitalized.
Most of us intuitively understand the rule for when to capitalize a noun. It just seems foggier with mom/Mom because we use the same word for both the name and the generic descriptor. However, when we examine how the word functions within the sentence, capitalization becomes clear.
This is an awesome website, I had this question for my morning work (I’m in school).nI had no idea that this was true. Thank you a lot for this!!!!!
Hana Mouadddine-
#3rd grade.
This is a truly excellent explanation! Very well written, and clearly elucidated. Thank you!
Yes, this clears things up for me, too! It’s always confused me, and I’ve always felt that it was ‘phoned in’ or just lazy NOT to capitalize. I think I can get behind this explanation. Thanks again!
Oh, this is so helpful! I really needed this for my school project. Thanks for the great explanation!
this helps a lot tyyyy! <3 <3
I think that US and British usages are different. For an English person to write, “After school, Mom took me to piano lessons” would be close to sacrilege. “Piano lessons” in place of “my piano lesson” being another example of different usages.
Interesting. I’m not an expert on British English, but I’ve seen the same capitzlization used for “mom/mum” and “dad.” For instance, from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire:
“[Fred and George] were planning to sell it all at Hogwarts to make some money, and Mum went mad at them.”
“Shall we go down and help your mum with dinner?”
The BBC “Learning English” blog also supports this capitalization: https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/learningenglish/2011/11/capitalisation.shtml
What about when “mom” and “dad” are referred to in a custody case to mean a specific mom and dad with no pronouns? Examples: The last time you talked with mom, was she interested in moving closer to the children’s doctor?
Dad took the child to the emergency room and immediately called mom to let her know what was going on.
Neither mom nor dad nor their attorneys have written you?
Can you think of any situations where mom and dad could disagree over the health of the children?
An issue came up about a holiday that mother had asked to take the children out of school.
I wish I could find a rule for situations like this.
In all of these cases, “mom” and “dad” are taking the place of a name:
The last time you talked with Susan, was she interested in moving closer…?
Larry took the child to the emergency room and immediately called Susan…
Neither Susan nor Larry nor…?
Can you think of any situations where Susan and Larry could…?
An issue came up about a holiday that Susan had asked…
Since “mom” and “dad” are being used in place of proper nouns, they’re capitalized. It’s no different than any other situation where mom/dad are used this way.
So does that make it, “I’ll go and tell my mom and Dad (Jack).” ??
Perhaps you’re not punctuating the sentence right. “I’ll go tell my mom and dad.” Who’s Jack?
Depending on the context, I guess you could also say, “I’ll go tell my mom, and Dad?”
Great question. I assume Jack is the father’s name. It’s a little odd to include his name and not the mother’s, but assuming there’s a good reason for that, it would be capitalized as follows:
I’ll go tell my mom and dad (Jack).
You’re probably wondering why. It’s because the possessive adjective “my” applies to both “mom” and “dad.” In other words, your sentence is a shorthand version of “I’ll go tell my mom and my dad.” Therefore, “dad” is lowercase.
Finally, after many years, somebody has made this so simple and idiot-proof for me. I can now confidently go back over my autobiography after somewhat lacking from my school days and at least get this part of the grammar correct. Thank you so much for this. Bless! DoK.
I’m glad this has been helpful for you! Good luck with your autobiography revisions.
“What is going on?” asked mum.
Or…
“I can’t believe you broke it!” shouted mum.
Should mum have a capital in these instances?
Yes! You could substitute a name in these cases, so “mum” is being used as a proper noun:
“What’s going on?” asked Susan.
“What’s going on?” asked Mum.
Hi can you tell me what is the punctuation mark or capita letter that was left out of this sentence please. ” Yes Mom, I will do my work tonight.”