capFirstLetters &lt;- toupper(substring(x, 1, 1))
    x &lt;- paste(capFirstLetters, substring(x, 2), sep = &quot;&quot;)
    x
  }
  
  #And we use the helper function to obtain a Start Case version of v (first
  #as list, then as a variable):
  vSplitStartCase &lt;- sapply(vSplit, foo)
  vStartCase &lt;- sapply(vSplitStartCase, function(x) paste(x, collapse = &quot; &quot;))
  
  #We can then compare the original v with the Start Case v in order to
  #find problems (i.e. places where they differ)
  proble