On capitalising job titles

One of the first things you learn about writing is to always capitalise proper nouns. You learn that all the important things in life deserve a capital letter, like names, places, and days of the week although, weirdly, not seasons. It's fairly intuitive but job titles are where everyone trips up.

We tend to capitalise the crap out of everything even remotely associated with work. Maybe it's a way to emphasise the importance of our roles or make it make sense that we grind from 9-5 while cats lie in sunbeams and sleep all day. You might notice it when someone writes about their hot date who "is a Human Rights Lawyer", decides to “take a Sick Day”, or says they got approved to transfer to "the Marketing team".

But, actually, job titles aren't capitalised when you’re referring to a generic description of your job. Which it is most of the time.

Examples of a job title used generically:

I work as a graphic designer.

I work in the marketing team.

I am a nurse but that is not a rash, it's just some dried jam on your arm.

Examples of a job title used specifically:

In my role as Head of Communications at Hammocks-R-US, I spent a lot of time napping in hammocks.

Project Lead Jane Lyon will be joining us for today's meeting.

Sincerely
Fox Mulder
FBI Special Agent

TL;DR? Job titles aren't capitalised when it’s a generic description of your job.

One final note on capitalising - you can learn a lot about a person by paying attention to what they capitalise. The subconscious lesson we learn early on is capitals = important. People tend to intuitively capitalise, or not capitalise, based on their value system rather than a style guide or grammar rules.

That said, sometimes it's just autocorrect.