Love is in the air! Valentine’s Day will be celebrated in many countries this Friday, February 14. Some schools participate in Valentine’s Day activities such as doing lessons about love/dating/marriage, wearing pink or red, or giving out valentine cards, roses, or chocolate. If you will be discussing Valentine’s Day with your young learners this week, make it educational and teach them the capitalization, punctuation, and spelling rules of this popular holiday!

Capitalization

In English, holidays always use capital letters for the holiday name and the word “Day”.

• I’m looking forward to Valentine’s Day.

When it’s clear we’re referring to the holiday, we can drop the word “Day” if we want.

• I got a ring for Valentine’s Day.
• I got a ring for Valentine’s.

But be careful! We don’t use capital letters when referring to a card, gift, or person.

• He gave me a valentine card yesterday.
• I bought a valentine present for my girlfriend.
• You will always be my valentine. (more…)

Often spelling and capitalization rules for holidays don’t get taught, and both teachers and students simply use what they’ve seen the most—not necessarily the correct form! Is it New Year, New Year’s, or New Years? When do we capitalize New Year and when do we use lowercase letters?

If you have classes today, it will be useful for your students to learn the correct spelling of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. If you and your students don’t go back to school until next week, this would still be an educational way to begin or wrap up talking about the holidays! (more…)

No matter what country they live in, students are usually exposed to Christmas in one way or another, whether it’s through their own family traditions, a homestay family’s traditions, from watching movies, etc. They can all benefit from knowing the best way to spell and capitalize holiday terms. Help your students learn common holiday phrases, capitalization rules, and word choices about Christmas and the holidays with the following tips! (more…)