---
title: SAIF.Business.Utilities business rules
summary: Enumerated business rules with per-rule trigger, enforcement, and outcomes.
status: draft
owner: SAIF Documentation Generation
last_reviewed: 2026-08-21
library: SAIF.Business.Utilities
reference_type: embedded
---

# SAIF.Business.Utilities business rules

This page captures business rules enforced by `TitleCase.ToTitleCase` and `mdlTextConversion.NumberToText`.

## BR-UTIL-001 Blank or null input passthrough

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| **Statement** | If the input string is `Nothing` or empty/whitespace-only after trimming, `ToTitleCase` returns the input unchanged. |
| **Trigger** | Call to `TitleCase.ToTitleCase` (or its `.ToTitleCase()` extension) with a null, empty, or whitespace-only string. |
| **Enforcement** | `TitleCase.ToTitleCase`, guard clause at method entry; also a second guard after tokenization if the split yields no non-empty tokens. |
| **Outcome** | Original (unchanged) string is returned. |
| **Source** | `SAIF.Business.Utilities\TitleCase.vb` |

---

## BR-UTIL-002 Mixed-case tokens are left untouched

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| **Statement** | A token that already contains both an upper-case and a lower-case letter is returned as-is, without any case transformation. |
| **Trigger** | `TitleCaseSingleWord` is called on a token containing mixed case (e.g., an already-formatted name fragment). |
| **Enforcement** | `TitleCase.TitleCaseSingleWord`, first conditional check. |
| **Outcome** | Token is preserved exactly as supplied. |
| **Source** | `SAIF.Business.Utilities\TitleCase.vb` |

---

## BR-UTIL-003 Known all-caps abbreviations stay upper case

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| **Statement** | If a token (case-insensitively) matches an entry in the curated abbreviation list (organization/degree/state/direction codes such as `SAIF`, `LLC`, `LLP`, `MD`, `JD`, `NE`, `NW`, `OR`, `CA`, `WA`, etc.), the token is rendered fully upper case. |
| **Trigger** | `TitleCaseSingleWord` on a token whose upper-cased form is a member of `UpperCaseWordList`. |
| **Enforcement** | `TitleCase.TitleCaseSingleWord`, `UpperCaseWordList` lookup branch. |
| **Outcome** | Token rendered in all upper case (e.g., `SAIF`, `LLC`, `OR`). |
| **Source** | `SAIF.Business.Utilities\TitleCase.vb` |

---

## BR-UTIL-004 Known connector words stay lower case

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| **Statement** | If a token (case-insensitively) matches a small set of connector/filler words (`is`, `in`, `the`, `an`, `of`, `on`, `and`, `de`), the token is rendered fully lower case (except where the whole-string first-letter-uppercase rule, [BR-UTIL-009](#br-util-009-first-character-of-output-is-always-forced-to-upper-case), applies). |
| **Trigger** | `TitleCaseSingleWord` on a token whose lower-cased form is a member of `LowerCaseWordList`. |
| **Enforcement** | `TitleCase.TitleCaseSingleWord`, `LowerCaseWordList` lookup branch. |
| **Outcome** | Token rendered in lower case. |
| **Source** | `SAIF.Business.Utilities\TitleCase.vb` |

---

## BR-UTIL-005 Known mixed-case exception words are normalized

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| **Statement** | If a token (case-insensitively) matches a curated mixed-case exception (`PhD`, `LaCombe`), the token is replaced with the exact canonical mixed-case spelling from the list, regardless of the casing supplied by the caller. |
| **Trigger** | `TitleCaseSingleWord` on a token whose lower-cased form matches an entry (lower-cased) in `MixedCaseWordList`. |
| **Enforcement** | `TitleCase.TitleCaseSingleWord`, `MixedCaseWordList` lookup branch. |
| **Outcome** | Token rendered as the canonical form, e.g., `PHD` → `PhD`, `lacombe` → `LaCombe`. |
| **Source** | `SAIF.Business.Utilities\TitleCase.vb` |

---

## BR-UTIL-006 Ordinal number suffixes are lower-cased

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| **Statement** | A token consisting of a numeric prefix followed by an ordinal suffix (`st`, `nd`, `rd`, `th`) is rendered with the number unchanged and the suffix lower-cased (e.g., `52ND` → `52nd`). |
| **Trigger** | `TitleCaseSingleWord` on a token where `HasNumberSuffix` returns true (the token splits into a purely numeric part and a recognized ordinal-suffix part). |
| **Enforcement** | `TitleCase.TitleCaseSingleWord` → `HasNumberSuffix` / `GetNumberSuffixParts`. |
| **Outcome** | Token rendered as `{number}{lowercased-suffix}`. |
| **Source** | `SAIF.Business.Utilities\TitleCase.vb` |

---

## BR-UTIL-007 Mc O'-style prefixes get a second inner capital

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| **Statement** | After the primary casing pass, if the resulting token starts with a recognized name prefix (`Mc`, `O'`), the remainder of the token after the prefix is separately proper-cased, producing names like `McMahon` or (in combination with other rules) `O'Brien`-style capitalization. |
| **Trigger** | `TitleCaseSingleWord` on a token whose (post-primary-casing) value starts with `Mc` or `O'`. |
| **Enforcement** | `TitleCase.TitleCaseSingleWord`, `MixedCasePrefixList` branch (applied after the main upper/lower/mixed/ordinal branch, on the else-path result of `word.ToProperCase`). |
| **Outcome** | Token rendered with an inner capital after the prefix, e.g., `MCMAHON` → `McMahon`. |
| **Source** | `SAIF.Business.Utilities\TitleCase.vb` |

---

## BR-UTIL-008 Possessive 's suffix is preserved in original case

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| **Statement** | A trailing `'s` suffix on a space-delimited word is re-applied verbatim from the source word (not re-derived from the tokenized/title-cased word), so possessive forms like `MIKE'S` are handled correctly even though the regex tokenizer splits on the apostrophe. |
| **Trigger** | Final pass in `ToTitleCase` over each space-delimited word of the reassembled output, when the word (case-insensitively) ends with `'s`. |
| **Enforcement** | `TitleCase.ApplyExactSuffixList`, invoked from `ToTitleCase` after `ReassembleString`. |
| **Outcome** | The longest matching suffix from `MixedCaseSuffixList` is spliced back onto the word unchanged. |
| **Source** | `SAIF.Business.Utilities\TitleCase.vb` |

---

## BR-UTIL-009 First character of output is always forced to upper case

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| **Statement** | Regardless of what word-level casing rules produced, the very first character of the final `ToTitleCase` output is always converted to upper case before returning. |
| **Trigger** | End of every `ToTitleCase` call (after tokenization, reassembly, and suffix handling). |
| **Enforcement** | `TitleCase.ToTitleCase`, final `Return output.Substring(0, 1).ToUpper & output.Substring(1)` statement. |
| **Outcome** | The formatted string always begins with an upper-case character, even if the first token would otherwise have been lower-cased (e.g., a leading connector word). |
| **Source** | `SAIF.Business.Utilities\TitleCase.vb` |

---

## BR-UTIL-010 NumberToText upper bound is enforced

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| **Statement** | Numbers greater than 999,999,999,999,999 (the trillions ceiling) are rejected; the function does not support values beyond this magnitude. |
| **Trigger** | Call to `mdlTextConversion.NumberToText` with `n > 999999999999999`. |
| **Enforcement** | `mdlTextConversion.NumberToText`, first guard clause. |
| **Outcome** | Throws `ApplicationException("Number too large to convert to text.  Limit is 999,999,999,999,999.")`. |
| **Source** | `SAIF.Business.Utilities\mdlTextConversion.vb` |

---

## BR-UTIL-011 Zero renders as an empty string, not the word "Zero"

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| **Statement** | Calling `NumberToText` with `0` returns an empty string rather than the word "Zero". |
| **Trigger** | `NumberToText(0)` (including the zero-remainder base case reached during recursion, e.g., spelling "One Hundred " with no remaining digits). |
| **Enforcement** | `mdlTextConversion.NumberToText`, `n = 0` branch. |
| **Outcome** | Empty string is returned/appended, meaning a whole-hundred/thousand/etc. value has no trailing "Zero" text. |
| **Source** | `SAIF.Business.Utilities\mdlTextConversion.vb` |

## Related documentation
- [Index](index.md)
- [Overview](overview.md)
- [Architecture](architecture.md)
- [Dependencies](dependencies.md)
- [Operations and processes](operations-processes.md)
- [Configuration settings](configuration.md)
- [API reference](api/index.md)

## Sources
- SAIF.Business.Utilities\TitleCase.vb
- SAIF.Business.Utilities\mdlTextConversion.vb
- .saifdocgen/state/runs/20260821-113120-claims-bof-web-legal/analysis/TSK007-analysis.md