The Auto-Capitalisation Annoyance
Google Docs includes several intelligent features designed to speed up your typing, including an auto-correction tool that automatically capitalises the first letter of every new sentence. While this is helpful for standard essay writing and letter drafting, it can be incredibly frustrating if you are typing code snippets, writing poetry, or creating technical documentation where specific lower-case formatting is absolutely essential.
How to Disable Auto-Capitalisation in Google Docs
You can turn off this specific grammar correction rule without disabling spell-check or other helpful typing features.
1. Open a document in Google Docs in your web browser.
2. Click on the Tools menu in the top toolbar.
3. Select Preferences from the drop-down list.
4. In the Preferences window, ensure you are on the General tab.
5. Locate the checkbox labelled Automatically capitalize words.
6. Untick the box.
7. Click the blue OK button at the bottom of the window to save your settings.
Reverting Existing Capitalisation
Disabling the feature will prevent Google Docs from capitalising any future sentences you type. However, it will not retroactively change the letters that have already been capitalised. If you need to quickly change a block of text back to lower-case, highlight the affected text, click on Format in the top menu, hover over Text, select Capitalization, and click on lowercase. This instantly reformats the entire highlighted section without requiring you to retype anything.