WD6X: Change Case Command Does Not Toggle to Sentence/Title Case

• Microsoft Word for Windows, versions 6.0, 6.0a, 6.0c
• Microsoft Word for Windows NT, version 6.0
• Microsoft Word for the Macintosh, version 6.0, 6.0.1, 6.0.1a

SYMPTOMS

The Change Case command may not change the selection to Sentence case or Title Case in the following conditions.

Case 1

The Change Case command (SHIFT+F3) does not change to Title Case when any of the following conditions are true.

• The selection includes an end-of-sentence punctuation (such as a period, question mark, or exclamation mark). Word changes from UPPERCASE to lowercase to Sentence case only.

      -or-
  

• The selection begins with a space. Word changes from UPPERCASE to lowercase to Sentence case only.

Case 2

The Change Case command does not change to Sentence case when any of the following conditions are true:

• The selection does not include the end-of-sentence punctuation. Word changes from UPPERCASE to lowercase to Title Case only.

      -or-
  

• The selection of an incomplete sentence includes the last letter in the paragraph but does not include end-of-sentence punctuation. Word changes from UPPERCASE to lowercase to Title Case only.

CAUSE

The Change Case command does not change a complete sentence to Title Case. Similarly, the Change Case command assumes that a non-sentence selection is never formatted for Sentence case. The command determines whether the selection is a sentence by checking for end-of-sentence punctuation. This feature is by design of the (SHIFT+F3) for the Change Case command.

However, when the Change Case command does not change an incomplete sentence to Title Case because the selection begins with a space, the behavior is not by design.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article. This problem has been corrected in Microsoft Word 97 for Windows and Microsoft Word 98 Macintosh Edition.

MORE INFORMATION

The Change Case command changes selected characters to all uppercase letters, all lowercase letters, or a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters. The Change Case command affects character capitalization but not character formatting, such as Small Caps or All Caps. For example, if you apply title case to text that already has Small Caps format, the first letter of each word becomes an uppercase letter while the rest of the characters retain the Small Caps format.

   Change Case option     Function
   ------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Sentence case          Capitalizes the first letter of the first word in
                          the selected sentence, or the first word after
                          the end of a sentence.

   lowercase              Changes selected text to all lowercase letters.

   UPPERCASE              Changes selected text to all uppercase letters.

   Title Case             Capitalizes the first letter of each word in the
                          selection.

   tOGGLE cASE            Changes all uppercase letters to lowercase
                          letters and all lowercase letters to uppercase
                          letters in the selection.

In Word 6.0 and later, the Change Case command differs from that of earlier versions of Word, in which Word switches from uppercase to lowercase to title case when you press SHIFT+F3, regardless of the context.