Why aren’t “Mom” and “Dad” always capitalized?

Why aren’t “Mom” and “Dad” always capitalized?

capitalizationI 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.

8 thoughts on “Why aren’t “Mom” and “Dad” always capitalized?

  1. Hana Mouaddine

    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.

  2. That Epic Bisexual Demigirl

    Oh, this is so helpful! I really needed this for my school project. Thanks for the great explanation!

  3. Michael van der Riet

    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.

  4. VR

    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.

    1. Signe Jorgenson Post author

      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.

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