Lessons › SQL › Deep Dive: Text, Date & Number Functions

SQL lesson

INITCAP() or equivalent

INITCAP capitalizes the first letter of every word and lowercases the rest, turning whatever casing chaos came in into clean, consistent title case.

Example

Cleaning Retail Name Casing with INITCAP()

SELECT customer_id, INITCAP(full_name) AS formatted_name, INITCAP(region) AS formatted_region, INITCAP(channel) AS formatted_channel
FROM customers

Result:

Step by step

1. Run the query without INITCAP so you can see what the unfiltered values look like.

   SELECT customer_id, full_name, INITCAP(region) AS formatted_region, INITCAP(channel) AS formatted_channel
   FROM customers;

2. INITCAP capitalizes the first letter of each word.

   SELECT customer_id, INITCAP(full_name), INITCAP(region) AS formatted_region, INITCAP(channel) AS formatted_channel
   FROM customers;

3. AS gives the INITCAP result a friendly column name so the output reads cleanly.

   SELECT customer_id, INITCAP(full_name) AS formatted_name, INITCAP(region) AS formatted_region, INITCAP(channel) AS formatted_channel
   FROM customers;

Practice

Try each one in your head first, then open the answer.

SELECT INITCAP(customer_id) FROM customers

SELECT INITCAP(brand) FROM products

SELECT INITCAP(supplier_name) FROM suppliers

SELECT INITCAP(department) FROM employees

SELECT INITCAP(review_id) FROM reviews