I regularly prepare professional profiles for a client to use in proposals and on their website. They work in a sector where excessive capitalisation is endemic, so I often have to explain my reasons for changing all kinds of words to lower case.
For example:
John is a Chartered Accountant and Fellow of the Institution of Chartered Accountants.
vs.
John is a chartered accountant and fellow of the Institution of Chartered Accountants.
My client has said that they capitalise phrases such as chartered accountant 'because they mean something specific'. I don't think that this is a justification for capitalising a word, but I'm ready to be told otherwise!
Can someone, with better grammatical knowledge than mine, explain which form of capitalisation is correct and, just as importantly, why?
In case it makes a difference, I am writing in the UK for a British audience.
Best Answer
As a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, all I can do is tell you how I would do it.
To begin with it is quite superfluous to say both that John is a Chartered Accountant and that he is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants. If he is the latter then clearly he is the former.
If I were just using the word "accountant" e.g. "John is an accountant", I would not use a capital A any more than I would use a capital V if I said "John is a van driver".
However as soon as you introduce the word "Chartered", then it is not simply an occupation which is referenced, but a professional qualification and status. And as a professional body the "Institute of Chartered Accountants" is a proper noun and merits capitals - in the same way that an academic body, such as the School of Oriental and African Studies, would be capitalised.
The term "Fellow" is a professional title, a bit like Doctor, hence that too should, in my view be capitalised.
Therefore the way it should be written, in my view is:
John is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants or for everyday business purposes John is an FCA.