Citizenship · Writing Test Sentences

The officer dictates a sentence containing 'United States.' How should it be written?

Correct answer

United States — both words capitalized, as it is the proper name of the country (United States or United States of America)

  1. A united States
  2. B United States — both words capitalized, as it is the proper name of the country (United States or United States of America)
  3. C United states
  4. D united states

Why this is the answer

UNITED STATES — BOTH words are capitalized because it is the proper name of the country. UNITED (U-N-I-T-E-D), STATES (S-T-A-T-E-S). It may also appear as 'United States of America.' The USCIS writing test requires correct capitalization of proper nouns, including country names. Errors to avoid: lowercasing either word ('united states,' 'United states,' 'united States'). 'United States' is among the most common terms on the citizenship test and must be capitalized correctly.
Source: USCIS Writing Test — United States

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About this topic: Writing Test Sentences

In the writing test the officer reads a sentence aloud and you must write it so that it has the same meaning; spelling, capitalisation and punctuation errors are tolerated unless they change the meaning. The words come only from the official USCIS writing vocabulary list. This is one of 25 Writing Vocabulary questions on writing test sentences, each with a full explanation on a single study page.

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