Do capital letters and hyphens matter on the IELTS Listening answer sheet?
Capital letters do not decide a mark: answers may be written in lower case or capital letters, and spelling is considered while capitalisation is not, so Wednesday and WEDNESDAY differ only in legibility.
Capital letters do not decide a mark: answers may be written in lower case or capital letters, and spelling is considered while capitalisation is not, so Wednesday and WEDNESDAY differ only in legibility.
Hyphens are a spelling choice too, and the official sheet lists one answer with and without the hyphen, as clean-up / clean up / cleanup. A hyphen cannot change the word count of an answer that has to match the words you heard.
Take the two conventions onto the answer sheet itself. Capitals are worth using for a name that has been spelled out letter by letter, because the marker has to read those letters and a capital is harder to misread; the sheet is completed in pencil, so a correction during the ten-minute transfer is possible. Hyphens need the opposite care: a hyphen written loosely can read as a word space, which turns one acceptable compound into two words and can push a short answer over its limit. Write it tight to the word you heard, and when you are unsure whether a compound is one word, follow the form the recording used rather than the shortest-looking version.