3

Should I use capital letters in front of items? There are two cases

The reasons for that are: 1) We don't have budget and 2) We can not do that.

or

The reasons for that are:

1) We don't have budget.

2) We can not do that.

1
  • 1
    Aside: #1 needs an article in front of budget. It should be the budget (if this is for a single item, or there's only one budget shared for everything being discussed) or a budget (if what's being talked about is significant enough to need an entire budget to itself). Commented Jul 15, 2014 at 6:34

2 Answers 2

7

Both capital and lowercase letters can be appropriate at the beginning of such lists. Different style guides are likely to offer different opinions about when to use capitals and when to use lowercase letters. As a rule of thumb, though, capital letters are more appropriate if each of the list items forms a complete sentence. In your example, the list items are complete sentences, so capital letters work well. But I would use lowercase letters in a case like this one:

You need three more ingredients: 1) eggs, 2) milk, 3) flour.

I would offer the same advice whether the list is inline, or the list items each have their own line. But again, some style guides may disagree.

0

Yes, beginning each list item with a Capital letter is the correct way to do it.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .