The core rule
Capitalize the first and last words, all major words, and lowercase the minor words — articles (a, an, the), short prepositions (of, in, on, to), and short conjunctions (and, but, or).
Example: "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps over the Lazy Dog" — note "over" stays lowercase as a short preposition, while "Quick," "Brown," "Fox," "Jumps," "Lazy," "Dog" are capitalized as major words. Verbs are always major, even short ones: "What It Is and How to Use It" capitalizes "Is" and "Use."
Chicago vs. AP: the differences that matter
The two big style guides agree 95% of the time. Where they differ:
- Preposition length: Chicago lowercases all prepositions regardless of length ("Through," "Between" stay lowercase); AP capitalizes prepositions of four or more letters ("Through," "Between," "Among").
- "To" in infinitives: both lowercase it ("How to Write"), since it is part of the verb phrase.
- Conjunctions: Chicago lowercases all coordinating conjunctions; AP also lowercases them, but capitalizes longer subordinating ones used as adverbs.
For most web writing, pick one guide and stay consistent — readers will never notice which you chose, but they notice inconsistency.
Tricky cases
- Hyphenated compounds: capitalize both parts — "Well-Known," "Up-to-Date." (Some styles lowercase the second part if it is a minor word, but capitalizing both is the safer default.)
- Words after colons: Chicago capitalizes the first word after a colon if it begins a complete clause; AP generally does too for headlines.
- "vs." and "v.": typically lowercase in titles ("Cats vs. Dogs").
- First/last word always capitalized — even "the," "a," or "and" if they open or close the title.
- Brand names with unusual casing (iPhone, eBay) keep their official styling.
Shortcuts and tools
Doing this by hand for every headline is tedious and error-prone. Paste your headline into our case converter, choose Title Case, and copy the result — it handles the standard capitalization pattern instantly. Then eyeball the minor words against the rules above.
Title case in other languages
English title case does not travel well — most languages have their own conventions, and applying English rules looks wrong:
- German: all nouns are capitalized anyway, so "title case" is nearly indistinguishable from normal text. Do not add extra capitalization.
- French: traditionally only the first word is capitalized ("Les misérables"), with more elaborate rules for multi-word titles. English-style capitalization reads as an error.
- Spanish/Italian/Portuguese: sentence case is the norm for titles ("Cien años de soledad").
- Turkish/Azeri: dotted and dotless I's (İ/i, I/ı) make automated case conversion genuinely tricky — verify converter output by hand.
What about Chinese, Japanese, and Korean? These scripts have no case distinction at all — capitalization is simply not a concept. For CJK titles, emphasis comes from particles, formatting, or word choice, never from casing. Running CJK text through a case converter is harmless but meaningless, and "title case" settings in multilingual CMSs should be disabled for these locales.
The practical rule for multilingual sites: follow each language's own convention rather than imposing English title case globally. Translators and native editors will thank you, and automated converters should be treated as drafts for non-English text, not final output. When in doubt, sentence case is the safer universal default.
One more consideration: sentence case ("The quick brown fox") is increasingly preferred for web UI, email subjects, and modern editorial styles — it is calmer and easier to scan. Our sentence case vs. title case comparison helps you choose per context.