Use minimal capitalisation. A heading starts with a capital, but other words should not be capped up, unless they are proper nouns. If in doubt, choose lower case.

Exceptions include: our Sun, Earth (the planet), and our Solar System, Universe and Moon, but not other suns, solar systems, universes and moons, or earth as in soil.

Use a capital letter when you are writing the names of people, languages, places and words relating to them:

Africa, African
Buddha, Buddhism
Shakespeare, Shakespearean

Only capitalise the name of a machine if it is the only one in the world:

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) started today, but other hadron colliders have been working for years.

The proton synchrotron at Fermilab has broken down. The Super Proton Synchotron (SPS) at CERN is still working fine.

Note: Do not capitalise a word to "prepare it" for abbreviation. So:

The theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) was developed from work in the 1950s. An interesting aspect of QCD is that...

NOT:

The theory of Quantum ChromoDynamics (QCD) was developed from work in the 1950s. An interesting aspect of QCD is that...

​​The following should not be capitalised, unless they appear at the beginning of a sentence:

• departmental secretariat(s), human resources advisers (i.e. when a term is common to several entities or persons, rather than being a single identifiable unit or function such as the Salaries Office or the Ombud)

• the management of a project, the CMS management (exception: the CERN Management, also referred to as “the Management”)

• members of the personnel, staff members, fellows, apprentices, visiting scientists, guest professors, project associates, students, users, etc.

• sector: the Accelerators and Technology sector, the Research and Computing sector, the Administration and General Infrastructure sector

• department: the Physics department, the Human Resources department, etc.

• group: the Accelerators and Beam Physics group, the Financial and Accounting Services group, the Radiation Protection group, etc.

• section: the Logistics section, the Site Services section, etc.

See section 7 of the full Style Guide for more information about when to use capital letters.