Use the following three conventions for capitalizing identifiers.

Pascal case

The first letter in the identifier and the first letter of each subsequent concatenated word are capitalized. You can use Pascal case for identifiers of three or more characters. For example:

BackColor

Camel case

The first letter of an identifier is lowercase and the first letter of each subsequent concatenated word is capitalized. For example:

backColor

Uppercase

All letters in the identifier are capitalized. Use this convention only for identifiers that consist of two or fewer letters. For example:

System.IO

System.Web.UI

You might also have to capitalize identifiers to maintain compatibility with existing, unmanaged symbol schemes, where all uppercase characters are often used for enumerations and constant values. In general, these symbols should not be visible outside of the assembly that uses them.

The following table summarizes the capitalization rules and provides examples for the different types of identifiers.

Identifier Case Example

Class Pascal AppDomain

Enum type Pascal ErrorLevel

Enum values Pascal FatalError

Event Pascal ValueChange

Exception class Pascal WebException

Note Always ends with the suffix Exception.

Read-only Static field Pascal RedValue

Interface Pascal IDisposable

Note Always begins with the prefix I.

Method Pascal ToString

Namespace Pascal System.Drawing

Parameter Camel typeName

Property Pascal BackColor

Protected instance field Camel redValue

Note Rarely used. A property is preferable to using a protected instance field.

Public instance field Pascal RedValue

Note Rarely used. A property is preferable to using a public instance field.