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Grammar, part 1.

Nouns: These are words that give the names of things.

• Common nouns are the names of common objects, and they start with lower case letters.  Examples:  cat, pipe, computer, road, person, city, or block.
• Proper nouns are the names of specific things such as people and places.  Proper nouns always start with a capital letter.  Examples: Wendy, Minti, New York, Pacific Ocean, Sesame Street, or Neptune.
• Collective nouns are the names of a group of things.  Like common nouns, common collective nouns start with lower case letters.  Examples of common collective nouns: flock (of sheep), mob (of kangaroos), pile (of pebbles), collection (of cd's), library (of books), school (of fish), group (of people), assembly (of people), band (of musicians).  Proper collective nouns, like proper nouns, use capital letters and are the names of a very specific groups of something.  Examples of proper collective nouns:  Government, Council, Administration, Minti Groups.

If we were to be talking about a dog, then we would be using dog as a common noun.  If we were talking about your pet dog named Fido, then dog is a common noun, and Fido is a proper noun.  If we were talking about governments of the world, governments is a common collective noun.  If we were talking about the Australian Government, Government is a proper collective noun.

If this helps you understand nothing more than when to use a capital letter, you have learned something valuable, because sometimes a mix up can be caused if you use a capital - or don't use one - in the wrong place.  For example: You have two cats, one named Fluffy and one named Kitty, and you write the sentence, "My little fluffy kitty cat drank my coffee." you could be talking about either of your cats.  If you wrote, "My little fluffy Kitty cat drank my coffee." you are refering specifically to your cat named Kitty.  If you wrote, "My little Fluffy kitty cat drank my coffee." you are refering to your cat named Fluffy.

Little things like this can save a lot of problems with regards to making yourself properly understood when writing.  It may seem trivial, but the English language is full of such little quirks.  When you get 30 trivial little things like this and put them together, you have a significant difference between making yourself understood and confusing everyone.