What title case is
Title case is the way titles and headlines are capitalized in English: the important words start with a capital letter, the small connecting words do not. "What to Pack for a Trip Across the Alps" is in title case.
Three rules hold in every major style guide:
- The first and last words always take a capital, even if they are small words.
- The first word after a colon takes a capital, because it starts a subtitle: "Packing Light: A Guide for Beginners".
- Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and pronouns always take a capital, however short they are. "Is" and "It" are capitalized in a title.
What changes from one guide to another is the treatment of the small words: articles, conjunctions and, above all, prepositions.
How AP, APA, Chicago and MLA differ
| Style | Small words kept lowercase | Prepositions |
|---|---|---|
| AP (AP Stylebook) | a, an, the; and, but, for, or, nor, so, yet | Lowercase up to 3 letters |
| APA (7th edition) | a, an, the; short conjunctions such as and, but, or, as, if | Lowercase up to 3 letters |
| Chicago (18th edition) | a, an, the; and, but, for, or, nor; to; as | Lowercase up to 4 letters |
| MLA (9th edition) | a, an, the; and, but, for, or, nor, so, yet; to | Lowercase at any length |
The difference shows as soon as a title contains a preposition of four letters or more:
| Style | "coffee with friends from abroad" | "what to pack for a trip across the alps" |
|---|---|---|
| AP | Coffee With Friends From Abroad | What to Pack for a Trip Across the Alps |
| APA | Coffee With Friends From Abroad | What to Pack for a Trip Across the Alps |
| Chicago | Coffee with Friends from Abroad | What to Pack for a Trip Across the Alps |
| MLA | Coffee with Friends from Abroad | What to Pack for a Trip across the Alps |
"With" and "from" have four letters: AP and APA capitalize them, Chicago and MLA do not. "Across" has six: only MLA keeps it lowercase. The converter shows the four versions of your own title under the result, so you can see straight away whether the styles disagree on it.
The 2024 change in Chicago style
Until its 17th edition, the Chicago Manual of Style lowercased prepositions of any length. The 18th edition, published in 2024, capitalizes prepositions of five letters or more: "A Room with a View", but "All About Eve". Some converters and older guides still apply the previous rule. This one follows the 18th edition.
Title case or sentence case?
Sentence case capitalizes only the first word and proper nouns, like an ordinary sentence: "What to pack for a trip across the alps", with "Alps" capitalized by hand because no converter can tell a place name from a common word.
- Title case suits titles of books, films, songs and reports, headlines in news and many blogs, and headings in APA papers.
- Sentence case suits headings on many websites and in product interfaces, email subject lines, and the titles of articles and books in an APA reference list.
If a publication has a house style, it overrides both. For sentence case, UPPERCASE and other conversions, use the Case Converter.
Title case in Excel and Google Sheets
Neither Excel nor Google Sheets has a title case function. The closest one, PROPER, capitalizes every word, small words included:
=PROPER("a walk with the dogs") returns "A Walk With The Dogs".
No style guide capitalizes "The" in the middle of a title, so that result is wrong in all four styles. PROPER also capitalizes any letter that follows an apostrophe, so "don't" becomes "Don'T". To put a column of titles into proper title case, paste it into the converter, one title per line, and paste the result back.
What the converter cannot know
The converter applies the rules of each style word by word. A few cases need a human eye:
- A word that is sometimes a preposition and sometimes not. In "Set Up Your Account", "up" belongs to the verb and is capitalized; the converter cannot tell it apart from a preposition, so check phrasal verbs.
- Names typed in lowercase. Acronyms and brand names typed with capitals, such as NASA or iPhone, are kept as they are. A name typed all in lowercase is treated as an ordinary word.
- House styles. Many newspapers and publishers adjust these rules. When yours does, it wins.
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