Use Proper Case

Since I began doing task analysis and creating mental models, I have taken pleasure in creating diagrams that look and read as cleanly as possible. The details in producing a professional-looking diagram include capitalizing every title as proper case.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve noticed that not everyone uses proper case in their diagrams. Not all combers actually type this way, and, honestly, it takes a little more time to do so. I try to ignore it when I see it, but I have to admit that when I am working on a project with someone who does not capitalize words, I go in and spend a bit of time updating the diagram so that things look nice and neat. My associate, Eric Fain, just mentioned today, “I think it looks better to have tasks show up in the diagram in proper case.” Yes! Better yet, he has a time-saving solution. He always does–that’s why I hang out with him.

Eric says, “You can convert a cell to proper case by using a text function in Excel, =proper(cell#). What I generally do, so that I am not working with the results of formulas, is to create the proper case column next to the original, then copy and paste just the values in a third column and delete the original two. If you use this method, you will end up with some minor corrections, such as all letters after apostrophes will be capitalized, but correcting
those minor ones will save enormous time rather than trying to make everything proper case by hand.”

Long live properly formatted titles in the diagram!