Learn how to capitalize titles according to different style guides, such as AP, Chicago, and APA. Find out which words are capitalized in titles and see examples of title case and sentence case.
Learn how to capitalize titles and headings using title case or sentence case. Find out the general rules, exceptions, and examples for different types of words and punctuation marks.
major words, including the second part of hyphenated major words (e.g., “Self-Report,” not “Self-report”) words of four letters or more (e.g., “With,” “Between,” “From”) Lowercase only minor words that are three letters or fewer in a title or heading (except the first word in a title or subtitle or the first word after a ...
Words Not Capitalized in Title Case. While the above words are generally capitalized in titles regardless of style, there are some words that are generally not capitalized when using title case. Again, these will depend on the specific style you choose (see Title Capitalization Rules by Style section). These include short words and conjunctions:
Learn how to capitalize titles and headlines according to different style guides, such as Chicago, APA, MLA, and AP. Find out the common rules for title case and sentence case, and use our free tool to generate correctly capitalized titles.
In such a case, the provided examples will help you identify the function (and thus, the correct capitalization) of the word in your title. The first word of a title or subtitle and (except for AMA, APA and Bluebook style) the last word are always capitalized. This is a universal rule and thus not repeated throughout the table.
Unless you’re working with a style guide that says otherwise (or if they’re the first or final word in a title), the following types of words are not capitalized: Articles — the tiny words that come before nouns to indicate whether it’s a general concept or a particular, specific thing, e.g., “ the garden” vs. “ a garden”
Learn how to capitalize titles of people, works, and labels according to common rules and examples. Find out which words should be capitalized and which should not in different types of titles.
Learn the difference between sentence case and title case in titles, and how to apply them according to different style guides. See examples of capitalization in titles for books, articles, and more.
Familiarize yourself with common title capitalization rules, and it will be easier to write articles, papers, and other pieces.
When writing a title in a business document, capitalize only the first word, the last word, and the so-called "principal" words. This is called title case. Use lowercase letters for articles, conjunctions, and prepositions unless they start or end the title.) ... Many businesses use capital letters for all the words in their titles. You should ...
The is capitalized because it is the first word in the title. Here, both Man and Sea are nouns, while Old is an adjective that modifies Man. Because they are nouns and adjectives, these words should be capitalized. 2. Articles, conjunctions, and prepositions should not be capitalized. Though it is sometimes said that small words in a title do ...
In other words, you capitalize a word if you would usually capitalize it in a sentence. If we return to our example title from above, we would write it like this: Here, the only capitalized words are A , Why (the first words in the title and subtitle, respectively), FBI (a proper noun and an initialism), and America (a proper noun).
Words such as “in,” “that,” “on,” and a couple of others can trip us up and get us second-guessing. So let’s determine once and for all whether we should capitalize these words in a title. Is “in” Capitalized in a Title? You may be able to tell from the subheading above that “in” is typically not capitalized in a title.
Title capitalization can be tricky. Unsure of what words should be uppercase? Here are a few examples so you can apply the rules to your writing!
3. Capitalize the major words. Moving on to a more complicated style for titles, the Chicago Manual of Style recommends, capitalizing the first word of the title, the last word of the title, and all nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, subordinating conjunctions, and a few other conjunctions.
Capitalize the first and last words of titles and subtitles; Capitalize nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and some conjunctions ... Do not capitalize the word that follows a hyphenated prefix if the prefix combined with the word is listed without a hyphen in a dictionary (e.g., “Anti-tumor,” but “Anti-Intellectual”) ...
Update, Nov. 19, 2025: We added a title capitalizer tool to the online editor. Very few people know which words should be capitalized in a title. In fact, the majority of people adopt rules from others who don’t know either. This usually takes on one of two forms: capitalizing every word, or capitalizing words containing three or more letters. Where blog posts and internal work ...
Many writers mistakenly believe that in a title, you should capitalize the principal and longer words and lowercase the minor, shorter words. For example, writers often lowercase all two- or three-letter words in a title because they’re short, and many articles, prepositions, and conjunctions—most of which should be lowercased—are short ...
