The Forced Sentence Case
Google Docs aims to ensure your writing follows standard grammatical rules. One of its most fundamental automated features is auto-capitalization. By default, Docs assumes that any text following a period, an exclamation mark, or a question mark is the start of a new sentence and automatically capitalizes the first letter of the next word you type. While usually desirable in prose, this behavior is a significant hindrance if you are drafting code, writing poetry with specific stylistic choices, creating lists of lower-case variables, or utilizing specific abbreviations where a period does not denote a sentence break.
Disabling Auto-Capitalization Preferences
To retain full control over your casing and stop Google Docs from automatically adding capital letters after punctuation, you must adjust the application’s core formatting preferences.
Open the Google Docs document you are working on. Navigate to the top menu bar, click on Tools, and then select Preferences from the drop-down list. A new dialog box will appear on your screen. Ensure that the General tab is selected at the top of this box. Look at the very first option in the list of checkboxes, which is labeled Automatically capitalize words. By default, this box will be checked. Click the checkbox to uncheck it. Finally, click the blue OK button at the bottom right of the dialog box to save the change. Google Docs will now respect exactly how you type, leaving lower-case letters alone even if they follow a period.