Would you capitalize small words like for and of on an award plaque?

If it was the first word yes.
I have seen it both ways for words in the middle of the phrase. Generally the longer the inscription the more likely they are to use lower case.

@WestRiverrat Do you mean the first word of each line? There is about 10 lines total on the award, each line is centered.

No, the first line of each sentence. With each sentence starting on a new line. Or all the words starting upper case.

You could just make all the lettering upper case, then you would not have to make that decision.

Each sentence starting a new line? It’s more like a sentence that is broken into many lines. Similar to an invitation.

Sentences can be on multiple lines. But if you end a sentence, start the next one on a new line, even if you have lots of room on the current line.

I think all capital letters would work best, you can put the recipients name in a larger font if you want it to stand out.

No.

Isn’t what is written a kind of title? Prepositions, a, an, and the are not capitalized except for the first one. Unless all the letters are capitalized. I suppose you could call a shop that does award inscriptions and ask what rules they go by. Or go to a website for awards and check out what they do.

I wish I could copy paste the whole thing.

@zensky Your example, Award of Excellence is what I am talking about. I wouldn’t capitalize either, but my president of our club capitalized everything, it looks odd to me.

It basically is:

Member Of The Year
For Excellence Of Service
For Stregnth Of Committment
For Significant Contribution

Etc…

It looks odd to me with the little words capitalized, but I did learn it way back in childhood that either is acceptable. I was just wondering what the jelly experts thought.

Of detracts from the important aspect of the messages; the person and the award.

Look at the difference.

@zensky I agree. do you think the For at the beginning of the lines should be capitalized?

I just wanted to feel more sure of myself before I suggested changing the whole thing so I wanted to ask the opinion of others.

The first word of any sentence is capitalized, regardless.

No. Well, it depends on the part of speech. You would capitalize Is.

@JLeslie you might want to find out what the plaque company is capable of before you make a lot of changes. Some of them only pay for upper case fonts as a way of controlling costs.

You can’t see them well, but the Hall of Fame plaques in these pictures are all in upper case. www.demusic.net

These are generally the rules I learned for capitalizing titles, as I recall them, but the rules for plaques may be different, I don’t know.

@WestRiverrat I hadn’t thought of that possibility. I figured they could print anything. Isn’t it done off of the PDF?

I wouldn’t. Personally, I think saying “for” in front of each item is redundant, and wouldn’t list it that way in the first place. I’d do it like this:

(Centered) Member of the Year

(Left aligned) Awarded for excellence of service, strength of commitment, significant contributions, etc…

@augustlan I also think writing “for” over and over doesn’t look good. I thought of that also late last night and sent it as part of my corrections to the person who put it together.