Should You Capitalize Baby Boomer, Generation Xer, and Millennial?

The baby boomers are retiring! The millennials rule the world! The Generation Xers are ignored and neglected! Have you noticed all the headlines about the different generations lately? (Okay, maybe not about Generation X.) Despite all this media attention, we don’t have consistent guidelines for when to capitalize baby boomer, Generation Xer, and millennial.

Here are two guidelines for capitalizing and lowercasing (mostly lowercasing) baby boomer, Generation Xer, and millennial. These guidelines are based on The American Heritage Dictionary, The Associated Press Stylebook, The Chicago Manual of Style (Chicago), Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, and the Oxford English Dictionary Online. If you are required to use another style guide or dictionary for your work or academic research, please consult those sources before utilizing these guidelines.

Lowercase baby boomer and millennial.

All of the sources mentioned above agree that baby boom, baby boomer, and millennial should be lowercased¹ unless they are appear at the beginning of sentences or in other locations that require all nouns to be capitalized (e.g., some titles, headings, lists, tables, charts, and graphics).

Capitalize Generation X and Generation Xer.

All of the sources mentioned above recommend capitalizing Generation X and Generation Xer.²

The reason for Generation X’s capitalization is unclear; however, the term’s primary origin is a novel titled Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland,³ so perhaps the capitalized title stuck with the term as it entered into everyday use. Regardless, those of us who grew up in flannel shirts and Dr. Martens don’t mind being members of the capitalized generation—we’ll take all the attention we can get!

If you’re writing about the specific decades in which baby boomers, Generation Xers, and millennials came of age, check out “How to Write Decades as Words and Numerals.”

Resources

1. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th ed., s.vv. “baby boom,” “millennial”; The Associated Press Stylebook 2018, s.vv. “baby boom, baby boomer,” “millennial”; The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 8.42; Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed., s.vv. “baby boom,” “millennial”; Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.vv. “baby boom,” “baby boomer,” “millennial,” accessed June 04, 2017, http://oed.com.

2. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th ed., s.v. “Generation X”; The Associated Press Stylebook 2018, s.v. “Generation X”; The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 8.42; Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed., s.v. “Generation X”; Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. “Generation X,” accessed June 04, 2017, http://oed.com.

3. Wikipedia, s.v. “Generation X,” last modified June 12, 2018, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X.