capitalisation of cardinal points (2025)

Hello -

I can never remember therule on this. Do I capitalise the 'n' and the 'e' North-East India? Likewise, would northern Canada be capitalised? I don't think so for the second but think so for the first. Anyone know the die-hard rule ?

Thanks!

This is a style issue, but generally, any place that commonly has an identity is capitalized whereas general references, e.g. northern Canada, are not.

On the other hand, the Canadians talk about the "Near North" as part of the country.

Examples: (I hope)

My father was born in southern Ontario.
Ontario is also a city in Eastern Oregon. (a well known area east of the Cascade mountains)
The U.S. Civil War was between the North and the South.
During the Gold Rush, many people headed north to Alaska.

Obviously, one has to know the local custom with respect to such things. (And I have no idea of the usage for northeastern India)

Note that although the title of your thread is "cardinal points of the compass," the only cardinal points are north, east, south and west - not northern or northeast.

Good luck

Beemouse said:

Hmm. Well then I am still stuck! A quick Google turns up many North-East India's but also Northeast India's. So there is another question - when do we meld the two cardinal points into one?!

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In the case of northeast, it's when the corrected compass direction is approximately 45 degrees from the reference point.

Although "northeast" is the proper term, at least in AE, some people (mostly BE speakers in my experience) love hyphenation of terms and invent proper nouns based upon them.

In the case of India, I would try to find a government source on the Internet.

Good luck

sdgraham said:

My father was born in southern Ontario.

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As an Ontarian, I have to say that Southern Ontario, while not an officially separate area, does have a clear figurative border. Barrie seems to be the unofficial dividing point between Northern and Southern, at least here in Sudbury. (Or, if you like, the province can be divided into the wide northern region and the southern peninsula.)

Personally, I would capitalize as I have done above, but sdgraham's examples are grammatically correct.

sdgraham said:

Although "northeast" is the proper term, at least in AE, some people (mostly BE speakers in my experience) love hyphenation of terms and invent proper nouns based upon them.

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Hmmpphh.

Not on my boat, it's not. And it is not a proper noun, and in BE it has always been hyphenated. As is north-north-east, and east-north-east, and north-east by east and north-east a half north.

I don't get the impression that north-east India is a formally titled region or state, but rather a geographical area. If it were formally named then the government of India would probably have a prescribed way of presenting the name, but I don't think there is any authority to go by.

If you look on sites of the Indian government, for example, you will find north-east (in respect to the Indian region) spelt every which way: capitalized, uncapitalized, fused, hyphenated, or as two words. This seems to be true world-wide, whether in relation to India or generally. I think it will be spelled according to regional variations, style manuals and whim. Typically, the Wikipedia article on the region cannot even be internally consistent.

According to the OED (which has nothing to say about its capitalization), north-east is spelled north-east: the fused "northeast" is not admitted.