When do you capitalize?

[elektra]

I must have missed the day in school where you learn which words should be capitalized.
And it's not something that gets caught by a spelling or grammar check usually.
Does anyone know of a good source for capitalization rules?
I am proofing something I wrote just now and I am realizing that I am a random capitalizer (Random Capitalizer?)!

[slworld]

From what I remember - any proper nouns (people names, names of places etc), months, weeks, abbreviations are all capital (like AAP), of course beginning of sentences

[schums]

A good rule of thumb is proper noun or start of a sentence gets capitalized. For example, "When we go to Kroger, we will get Maxwell House coffee."

Oh, and titles get capital too, if they are associated with someone's name. So "President Obama" gets a capital, but not "the president".

[KrisM]

Here's a link I found: http://www.libraryonline.com/default.asp?pID=48. Most of the things still go under "proper nouns", but it gives a lot of examples of them.

[AnnieW625]

From what I remember - any proper nouns (people names, names of places etc), months, weeks, abbreviations are all capital (like AAP), of course beginning of sentences

Yep that's correct, and in abbreviated states both the first and second letter are always capitalized.

[larig]

don't forget French fries. (I rarely bother to capitalize online. can't be bothered with that shift key. terrible, I know)

[elektra]

I think I am good with names, places, start of sentences. I think my problem is when it comes to what exactly defines a proper noun, especially when using industry jargon.
Did not know about French fries though! LOL. I'll check out that link, thanks!