Title Case Rules for Headings, Book Titles, and Job Titles

Title case looks simple: capitalise the important words. The difficulty is that “important” is defined differently by every style guide. APA, Chicago, MLA, and the house styles used by publishers disagree about short words, hyphenated compounds, and the word after a colon. A title that is correct in one context can be wrong in another.

The Case Converter applies a consistent title case in one pass. Use it to remove the manual work, then check the result against the guide you are following.

The words that are usually capitalised

Nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs carry the meaning of a title, so they are capitalised in almost every title-case system. “The Quiet Power of Small Habits” capitalises the noun “Power”, the adjective “Quiet”, and the noun “Habits”. “How to Write a Better Sentence” capitalises the verb “Write” and the adjective “Better”.

The first and last words are always capitalised, even if they are short articles or prepositions. “What Is the Point Of It” is wrong at the end; “What Is the Point Of It” should be “What Is the Point of It” under a guide that lowercases “of”, but the final word “It” is a pronoun and is capitalised anyway. A title ending in “of” is unusual, but the rule still applies.

The words that vary

Articles (“a”, “an”, “the”), coordinating conjunctions (“and”, “but”, “or”, “nor”, “for”, “so”, “yet”), and short prepositions (“at”, “by”, “for”, “in”, “of”, “on”, “to”, “up”, “with”) are usually lower case in the middle of a title. Some guides lowercase all prepositions regardless of length; others capitalise prepositions of four letters or more. Chicago, for example, lowercases prepositions regardless of length, while some house styles capitalise long ones.

Hyphenated compounds are the other common disagreement. Some guides capitalise both parts (“Self-Study”), some capitalise only the first (“Self-study”), and some follow the capitalisation of the dictionary entry. Pick the guide’s rule and apply it to every compound in the document.

Headings, book titles, and job titles

A heading in a report is a title, so it follows the document’s style guide. A book title follows the publisher’s or the citation style’s rule. A job title is different: it is a description of a role, and many organisations lowercase it unless it precedes a name. “She is the marketing director” is correct in a sentence; “Marketing Director Jane Cruz” capitalises the title because it is attached to a name.

Do not apply title case to URLs, file names, email addresses, code identifiers, or hashtags. Case can carry meaning in those contexts, and changing it may break a link or a search. The converter is for prose, not for technical strings.

Check the result against the guide

Run the Case Converter over the title, then read it once. Check the first and last words, the words after a colon or a dash, and any hyphenated compound. If the document uses a named style, compare with its examples rather than a generic website.

For the wider choice between title case, sentence case, and uppercase, read Title Case, Sentence Case, or UPPERCASE. If you need to change case inside a word processor, see How to Change Text Case in Word, Google Docs, and Excel.