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The input mask property provides keystroke by keystroke data validation to help insure data entry accuracy in table fields. This property can be used for a variety of formatting including capitalization of proper names. Input masks that focus on text use “L” for required alphabetic characters and “?” for optional alphabetic characters. The “>” symbol is used to capitalize subsequent alphabetic characters, while the “<” symbol is used to make the alphabetic characters that follow it lowercase. While not every proper name has the same number of characters, the combination of all of these input mask components can be used to format proper names. The key is to make sure that there are enough “?” present to account for the total number of lowercase characters in any name. For example, if the longest possible name has 15 characters, then >L<?????????????? would work, however if names could be longer it is important to supply enough “?” to allow for the appropriate data to be entered.