The German Noun Capitalisation Checker flags lowercased words in German text that are probably nouns and therefore should be capitalised. German is unusual in capitalising the first letter of every noun, so failing to do so is one of the most common mistakes for learners and a frequent typo even for native writers.
How it works
The tool can’t fully parse German, so it combines two reliable heuristics:
- Article and preposition cues. A lowercased word that directly follows a definite/indefinite article (
der,die,das,ein,eine, …), a fused preposition+article (im,zum,am,beim,vom,zur), or a possessive pronoun (mein,dein,unser, …) is very likely a noun and is flagged. - Noun dictionary. A bundled list of common German nouns catches lowercased nouns that lack a preceding cue (e.g. a noun at the start of a list).
Each flagged word is shown with the trigger that caught it, so you can judge quickly. The tool also notes lowercased sentence starts.
Tips and notes
Because detection is heuristic, expect occasional misses (a noun outside the dictionary with no article cue) and the odd false positive (a nominalised adjective such as das Schöne). Use the flags as a focused checklist rather than an auto-correct. Nominalised verbs (das Lesen, beim Essen) and adjectives (im Allgemeinen) are capitalised in German and are caught when an article cue is present. For authoritative correction of formal documents, follow up with a full grammar checker.