How to avoid capitalised acronyms and abbreviations from being lowercased by .capitalize()? Python

Question

Capitalising the first letter of a sentence using .capitalize() works fine. Except when the first word of the sentence is an acronym like 'IBM' or 'SIM', which get lowercased (except for the first letter). For example:

L = ["IBM", "announced", "the", "acquisition."]
L = [L[0].capitalize()] + L[1:]
L = " ".join(L)
print(L)

gives:

"Ibm announced the acquisition."

But I would like this:

"IBM announced the acquisition."

Is there a way to avoid this - e.g. by skipping acronyms - while still outputting capitalised sentences like below?

"IBM's CEO announced the acquisition."
"The IBM acquisition was announced."

Create a list of your acronyms and don't apply capitalize to them — Chris_Rands, Jun 04 '18 at 15:14
No I not have the list of acronyms in advance. They could be anything. — twhale, Jun 04 '18 at 15:14
Well if they could be *anything* then you've given yourself an impossible task... — Chris_Rands, Jun 04 '18 at 15:15
Python is a programming language not an intelligent software or library to detect acronyms automatically. — Bharath M Shetty, Jun 04 '18 at 15:16
@Chris_Rands Okay: so then basically I would have to write some rule stating that: if the first and second letter are capitals already, skip `.capitalize()` ? — twhale, Jun 04 '18 at 15:17

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 04 '18 at 15:17

2

Just capitalize the first character of the first word:

L = ["IBM", "announced", "the", "acquisition."]
L[0] = L[0][0].upper() + L[0][1:] #Capitalizes first letter of first word
L = " ".join(L)

print(L)
>>>'IBM announced the acquisition.'

answered Jun 04 '18 at 15:17

iacob

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How to avoid capitalised acronyms and abbreviations from being lowercased by .capitalize()? Python

1 Answers1