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If you’re celebrating Mother’s Day this weekend, you have occasion to both address your mom (You’re the best, Mom) and talk about her (I’m spending the day with my mom).
While your mom is certainly the best and deserving of the royal treatment, she’s not always deserving of capitalization.
Let us explain.
“Mom” and other family titles (dad, grandma, etc.) act as proper nouns when they are replacing someone’s name. So if you are using “mom” where you would otherwise use her name, you capitalize the word, like we did in the example above: You’re the best, Mom.
However, if you aren’t addressing her directly or otherwise substituting “mom” in place of her name, you don’t capitalize it: My mom is the best.
Here are some more examples:
He went shopping with his mom.
I took Mom and Dad to the movies.
Of course, if your mom always wants to be “Mom,” we recommend doing what she says 😉
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