Title case rules: which words to capitalize in a title

The rule in one paragraph

Capitalize the first and the last word of the title, no matter what they are. Capitalize every noun, pronoun, verb, adjective and adverb, including short ones such as Is, Be, It and Up when it is part of a verb like Set Up. Lowercase the articles a, an and the, the coordinating conjunctions and, but, or, nor, for, so and yet, and short prepositions such as at, by, in, of, on and to.

Example: the art of war and the history of rome becomes The Art of War and the History of Rome. War, History and Rome are nouns; of, and and the stay small because they are in the middle of the title.

AP, Chicago, APA and MLA compared

All the main guides agree on the core rule. They differ on prepositions and conjunctions with four or more letters, such as with, from, about, between and that. AP and APA capitalize words of four letters or more; Chicago and MLA lowercase prepositions of any length.

Note that the guides also decide where title case is used at all. AP uses it for the titles of books, films and songs, but news headlines in AP style are written in sentence case. APA uses title case for paper titles and headings, but sentence case for article and book titles in the reference list.

Tricky words and cases

• Short verbs and pronouns are capitalized: Who Is It, What It Is, How to Be Happy.
• Words that look like prepositions but work as adverbs or part of a phrasal verb are capitalized: Log In to Your Account, Turn Off the Lights.
• The last word is always capitalized, even if it is small: What to Look For, Something to Think About.
• After a colon, most guides capitalize the first word of the subtitle: Design: A Practical Introduction.
• Hyphenated compounds usually get a capital on each main part: Long-Term Planning, Well-Known Brands. Guides differ on details such as Self-assessment.
• Brand names and abbreviations keep their own form: iPhone, eBay, NASA, PDF.

Title case or sentence case

Sentence case capitalizes only the first word and proper nouns, exactly like a normal sentence: The art of war and the history of Rome. It is easier to apply consistently, it reads more calmly, and it avoids debates about prepositions.

Many publishers, newspapers and software companies use sentence case for headlines and interface text, and the Google and Microsoft developer style guides both recommend it for headings. Title case remains the convention for book, film and song titles in English, and many blogs and marketing pages still use it for headlines. Pick one style for each kind of text and use it everywhere: mixing both on one page looks careless.

How other languages handle titles

Title case as described above is mainly an English habit. Other languages follow their own rules, and the converter's language setting changes both the letters and the list of small words.

Spanish: the Royal Spanish Academy recommends capitalizing only the first word and proper nouns in titles of books and works, as in Cien años de soledad. Capitalizing every word is considered an English influence; it is accepted for names of newspapers, magazines and collections.

French: usually only the first word and proper nouns, with a traditional rule in some publishing styles that also capitalizes the first noun after an opening article, as in Le Rouge et le Noir.

German: titles start with a capital and then follow normal spelling, where every noun is capitalized anyway.

Turkish: for titles of books, magazines and works, every word is capitalized except the conjunctions ve, ile, ya, veya, ki, de, da and the question particle mi. Turkish also needs the dotted and dotless i to convert correctly: i becomes İ, and ı becomes I.

Converting text quickly

Paste your headings into the case converter above and choose Title Case. Each line is treated as its own title, so you can convert a whole list of headings at once. The first and last word of each line are always capitalized, and the small words of the selected language stay lowercase. For English that list is a, an, the, and, but, or, nor, for, so, yet, as, at, by, in, of, off, on, per, to, up, via and vs.

Prepositions that are not on that list, such as with, from and about, are capitalized, which matches AP and APA. If you follow Chicago or MLA, lowercase them by hand. Words written fully in capitals, such as NASA, PDF or EU, are kept as they are unless the whole line is in capitals. Brand names with mixed capitals still need a check, because iPhone and eBay come out as Iphone and Ebay. Also check words like off or up used as part of a verb (Turn Off), which the tool keeps small. Letters after an apostrophe stay small, which is right for Don't but turns O'Brien into O'brien.

Common mistakes

• Capitalizing every word, including a, of and the: this is Capitalize Each Word, not title case.
• Lowercasing short verbs like Is or Are because they are short.
• Leaving the last word lowercase when it is a preposition.
• Mixing title case and sentence case for headings of the same level.
• Using title case in Spanish or French book titles, where the language uses sentence style.