Using Capital Letters in OET Writing Exam

In English, people generally don’t write in all capital letters. In fact, nowadays it is considered quite rude to write that way as it is the written equivalent of shouting. However, there are some people who prefer to write this way at certain times. There are even those who ask whether or not they are allowed to write in capital letters during the OET.

In conventional English, people write in lower case letters except for the first letter in a sentence or a proper noun such as a person or product’s name. These rules are pretty simple to follow, and breaking them is considered very poor form. Writing that suffers from arbitrary capitalization

immediately looks bad, and will draw negative attention.

Using captial letters

However, what about writing all capital letters? Is that better than writing incorrectly?

According to the people who design the OET, it is actually perfectly acceptable to write in capital letters during the exam. They state that candidates are allowed to use all capital letters for writing answers to the following sections:

Reading Part A
Listening Part A

This is hardly surprising. In fact, in many English exams it is acceptable to use capital letters for such types of answer. It makes the answer less ambiguous, making it easier for the examiner to decide whether or not a candidate has written down the right word.

However, what is surprising is the fact that you may also write in all capital letters for the writing sub-test

! This is quite interesting as such a style choice is not considered conventional English. They do note, however, that candidates must be consistent. Either you can choose to write in traditional form, with lower case letters and capitals only used when grammatically required, or you can write in all capital letters – with no lower case letters whatsoever. Remember, writing all capital letters may take slightly longer. So, if you struggle with time, then following capitalisation rules mentioned above would make more logical sense.

The benefits of this approach are simply that it makes your writing clearer and perhaps it is easier to write quickly. For people who struggle with handwriting to some extent, it may be helpful to use this approach. It rules out the possibility of your handwriting causing a misunderstanding for the examiner

, which could potentially cost you points. For those who grew up writing in all capital letters, it may be faster and easier to write this way.

So what is the best way to write your OET answers

? Well, that’s up to you. Now you know what the policy is, you can choose the method that suits you best.