Why is BBQ capitalized? The most accepted spelling of the word is “barbecue” because it most closely resembles the word from which it's derived–barbacòa. The shorter forms, such as bar-b-q, are just abbreviations that play on the sounds from the syllables be (B) and cue (Q).

Is barbecue a proper noun?

Other variations, like bar-b-cue and BBQ, are common to see in advertising or the names of restaurants, but they are comparatively rare in edited prose. As you can see in this New York Times example, BBQ is in the name of the restaurant. In this sense, it is acting as a proper noun.

How do I write barbecue?

While the standard modern English spelling of the word is barbecue, variations including barbeque and truncations such as bar-b-q or BBQ may also be found. The spelling barbeque is given in Merriam-Webster and the Oxford Dictionaries as a variant.