The Canadian Style
http://www.btb.termiumplus.gc.ca
Common menu bar links
Institutional Links
-
Translation Bureau
Language Portal of Canada
-
TERMIUM Plus®
-
Chapters
- + Abbreviations
- + Hyphenation: Compounding and Word Division
- + Spelling
- - Close Capitalization
- Introduction to Capitalization
- Initial words
- Personal names
- Words derived from proper nouns
- Governments and government bodies
- Institutions
- Political parties and movements
- Titles of office or rank
- Personifications and abstractions
- Family appellations
- Races, languages and peoples
- School subjects, courses and degrees
- Military terms
- Modes of transportation
- Medals, awards, honours and decorations
- Sporting events and trophies
- Time references and historical periods and events
- Cultural periods, movements and styles
- Terms related to religion
- Deities
- Geographical terms
- Buildings, monuments and public places
- Astronomical terms
- Biological terms
- Chemical, medical and pharmacological terms
- Scientific names with eponyms
- Copyrighted names
- SI/metric units
- Publications and works of art
- Parts of a book or document
- Headings
- Terms indicating time or numbered sequence
- Lists
- Legal usage
- The salutation and complimentary close
- Compounds
- The definite article
- Single letters used as words
- + Numerical Expressions
- + Italics
- + Punctuation
- + Quotations and Quotation Marks
- + Reference Matter
- + Letters and Memorandums
- + Reports and Minutes
- + Usage
- + Plain Language
- + Elimination of Stereotyping in Written Communications
- + Geographical Names
- + Revision and Proofreading
- + French Typographical Rules
Proactive Disclosure
Important notice
The Canadian Style has been archived and won’t be updated before it is permanently deleted.
For the most up-to-date content, please consult Writing Tips Plus, which combines content from Writing Tips and The Canadian Style. And don’t forget to update your bookmarks!
Search and Functionalities Area
4.26 Scientific names with eponyms
In scientific terms composed of a common noun preceded by a proper noun, an adjective derived from a proper noun, or a proper noun with an apostrophe s, capitalize the adjective or proper noun but not the common noun. Do not capitalize the names of laws or theories or the names of minerals, particles or elements derived from personal names:
- Hodgkin’s disease
- Becquerel rays
- Reiter’s syndrome
- Gaussian curve
- Bohr radius
- Ohm’s law
but
- the general theory of relativity
- the second law of thermodynamics
- forsterite
- boson
- germanium
Note that certain personal names begin with a small letter:
- van’t Hoff equation
- van Willebrand disease
© Public Services and Procurement Canada, 2024
TERMIUM Plus®, the Government of Canada's terminology and linguistic data bank
Writing tools – The Canadian Style
A product of the Translation Bureau
