What Is Title Case?

Title case is a capitalization style where the first letter of every major word is capitalized. For example, "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" becomes "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog".

Title case is the standard formatting for headings, titles, and labels across journalism, academic writing, publishing, and web design. It gives text a polished, professional appearance that stands out from body copy.

When to Use Title Case

Article and blog headlines — Most publications use title case for article headlines to make them visually prominent and scannable.
Book, movie, and song titles — Creative works are almost always written in title case: "To Kill a Mockingbird," "The Dark Knight," "Bohemian Rhapsody."
Email subject lines — Title-cased subject lines look professional and tend to have higher open rates in marketing emails.
Presentation slides — Slide titles and section headers should use title case for a clean, professional look.
Navigation menus and buttons — Many UI design systems use title case for navigation labels, menu items, and button text.
Academic paper headings — APA, MLA, and Chicago style guides all require title case for certain heading levels.

Title Case Rules by Style Guide

Different organizations have slightly different rules for title case. The main difference is which small words to capitalize:

AP Style (Associated Press)

Capitalize all words with four or more letters. Always capitalize the first and last word. Capitalize verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns regardless of length. Do not capitalize articles (a, an, the), prepositions with three or fewer letters (at, by, for, in, of, on, to, up), or coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, for, yet, so) unless they are the first or last word.

Chicago Manual of Style

Similar to AP, but also lowercase "to" in infinitives and prepositions regardless of length. Always capitalize the first and last word of the title and any subtitle.

APA Style (American Psychological Association)

Capitalize all "major words" — nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and words of four letters or more. Lowercase articles, short prepositions (fewer than four letters), and coordinating conjunctions.

This tool capitalizes the first letter of every word for simplicity, which works well for most use cases. For strict style guide compliance, you may need to manually adjust small words after conversion.

Title Case vs. Sentence Case

The most common formatting question is whether to use title case or sentence case. Here's a quick comparison:

Title case: "How to Write Better Headlines for Your Blog" — every major word capitalized, looks formal and polished.
Sentence case: "How to write better headlines for your blog" — only the first word capitalized, looks casual and conversational.

Use title case for formal publications, print media, academic work, and traditional editorial content. Use sentence case for casual blogs, social media, and modern web applications (Google and Apple both prefer sentence case in their UIs).

Title Case Converter — Capitalize Every Word