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How to Use Capitalize My Title

1. Select your title capitalization style above by clicking on a tab. If you have questions, read our title capitalization rules below.
2. Enter your title in the text box.
3. Watch your title convert case and be automatically capitalized!
4. If you want to, you can press “Enter” on your keyboard or click the Copy button next to the text box to copy the text to your clipboard.
5. Capitalize your next title 😃

Bonus: We have some great shortcuts to make your life easier.

Quick Links: How to Use Capitalize My Title, What to Capitalize in a Title (What Is Title Case, What Is Sentence Case), Title Capitalization Rules by Style (APA, Chicago, AP, MLA, BB, AMA, NY Times, Wikipedia)

Case Converter Options

You have multiple options to capitalize and change the case of your titles, headlines, song titles, book titles, email subjects, and more. Below is a description of the ways you can use our case converter.

Top Tabs

The top tabs allow you to select which style of capitalization you want to use. You can learn more in the Title Capitalization Rules by Style section.

• APA: Capitalize using the APA style guide.
• Chicago: Capitalize using the Chicago Manual of Style capitalization rules.
• AP: Use the Associated Press Stylebook capitalization guidelines.
• MLA: Use the MLA Handbook title capitalization rules.
• BB: Use the Bluebook title capitalization rules.
• AMA: Use the AMA Manual of Style capitalization rules.
• NY Times: Use the NY Times style guidelines.
• Wikipedia: Use Wikipedia’s capitalization rules.
• Email: Use proper capitalization rules for email.

Bottom Buttons

The buttons at the bottom let you choose specific case conversion options for the various styles.

• Title Case: Capitalize only the words that should be capitalized according to the top tab style guide.
• Sentence Case: Capitalize only the first word of each sentence.
• Uppercase: Convert your title from lowercase to uppercase.
• Lowercase: Convert your title from uppercase to lowercase.
• First Letter / Proper Case: Capitalize the first letter of every word.
• Alt Case: Capitalize every other letter of your text starting with the first letter being capitalized.
• Toggle Case: Change the case of every letter in your string. Similar to the Microsoft Word feature.

Other Options

• Straight quotes: Curly quotes (“,”,‘,’) are used in good typography. If you need to use straight quotes, enable this feature.
• Get Headline Score/Get Email Subject Score: Find out how strong your headline or email subject is by using our convenient tools.

Common Case Converter Uses

Title case converter

Quickly convert your title or text to title case by simply clicking the “Title Case” button in the tool above.

Sentence case converter

Quickly convert your title or text to sentence case by simply clicking the “Sentence case” button in the tool above.

Uppercase to lowercase converter

If you left caps lock on accidentally, you can quickly convert your title from uppercase to lowercase by selecting the “lower” button above. This will uncapitalize your text. You can also use this tool to do it automatically.

Lowercase to uppercase converter

Alternatively, you can use our tool to convert text from lowercase to uppercase by clicking the “UPPER” button. You can also use this tool to do it automatically.

Uppercase to title case converter

If you want to change your title from uppercase to title case, you can select the “Title Case” button above.

All caps converter

You can quickly convert your text or title to all caps by selecting the “UPPER” button on the tool. This will convert your text to uppercase.

What to Capitalize in a Title

Understanding what to capitalize in a title is important to make sure that your titles and headlines look correct. If you’re confused about what words to capitalize in a title or headline, we recommend using our title capitalization tool above, but if you want specific capitalization rules, they are as follows.

First, it is important to note that there are four main title capitalization styles: Chicago style, APA style, MLA style, and AP style. Each of these capitalization styles has slightly different rules for which words are capitalized and each of these styles can be written using title case capitalization or sentence case capitalization.

What Is Title Case Capitalization?

Title case is the most common form of title and headline capitalization and is found in all four major title capitalization styles. Title case is also commonly used for book titles, movies titles, song names, plays, and other works.

In general, the following capitalization rules apply across the four styles in title case:

• Capitalize the first word in the title
• Capitalize the last word in the title
• Capitalize the important words in the title

Important words in that last bullet generally refer to:

• Adjectives (tiny, large, etc.)
• Adverbs (quietly, smoothly, etc.)
• Nouns (tablet, kitchen, book)
• Pronouns (they, she, he)
• Subordinating conjunctions (when fewer than 5 letters)
• Verbs (write, type, create)

Title case is the most common title capitalization for book titles, headlines, articles titles, etc. When multiple letters in a title need to be capitalized, use title case capitalization.

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:

• Articles (a, an, the)
• Coordinating Conjunctions (and, but, for)
• Short (fewer than 4 letters)
• Prepositions (at, by, to, etc.)

What Is Sentence Case?

The other major type of title capitalization standard is sentence case. Sentence case simply means you capitalize the first letter of a sentence, proper nouns, and nothing else as opposed to capitalizing almost every first letter in title case. It is the same across all of the four styles.

For more specific title capitalization rules, you can see the following sections which cover each style of title capitalization rules or check out our FAQs for common capitalization questions. Our tool lets you convert the case of your text easily into sentence case.

Title Capitalization Rules by Style

Chicago Manual of Style 17th Edition Capitalization Rules

Chicago Style is one of the most used and respected headline capitalization methods used in journalism. The rules are fairly standard for title case:

1. Capitalize the first and the last word.
2. Capitalize nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs (including phrasal verbs such as “play with”), adverbs, and subordinate conjunctions.
3. Lowercase articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions, and prepositions (regardless of length).
4. Lowercase the second word after a hyphenated prefix (e.g., Mid-, Anti-, Super-, etc.) in compound modifiers (e.g., Mid-year, Anti-hero, etc.).
5. Lowercase the ‘to’ in an infinitive (e.g., I Want to Play Guitar).

See Chicago Manual of Style Guide

Get Quick Guide

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) 7th Edition Capitalization Rules

Making sure you have the right capitalization for APA headings is crucial for scholarly articles. The following rules apply to APA headline capitalization and title capitalization:

1. Capitalize the first word of the title/heading and of any subtitle/subheading
2. Capitalize all major words (nouns, verbs including phrasal verbs such as “play with”, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns) in the title/heading, including the second part of hyphenated major words (e.g., Self-Report not Self-report)
3. Capitalize all words of four letters or more.

See APA Style Guide

Get Quick Guide

Modern Language Association (MLA) Handbook, 9th Edition Capitalization Rules

Making sure you have the right capitalization for MLA headings is crucial for scholarly articles. The following rules apply to MLA headings:

1. Capitalize the first word of the title/heading and of any subtitle/subheading.
2. Capitalize all major words (nouns, verbs including phrasal verbs such as “play with”, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns) in the title/heading, including the second part of hyphenated major words (e. g., Self-Report not Self-report).
3. Do not capitalize articles, prepositions (regardless of length), and coordinating conjunctions.
4. Lowercase the second word after a hyphenated prefix (e.g., Mid-, Anti-, Super-, etc.) in compound modifiers (e.g., Mid-year, Anti-hero, etc.).
5. Do not capitalize ‘to’ in infinitives (e.g., I Want to Play Guitar).

See MLA Style Guide

Get Quick Guide

The Associated Press (AP) 2020 Edition Stylebook Capitalization Rules

AP style capitalization is mainly used by writers for the Associated Press but is also used widely throughout journalism. The capitalization rules are as follows:

1. Capitalize the first and the last word.
2. Capitalize nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs (including phrasal verbs such as “play with”), adverbs, and subordinate conjunctions.
3. Lowercase articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions, and prepositions.
4. Lowercase the second word in a compound modifier (e. g., Mid-year or On-site).
5. Capitalize words with four or more letters (including conjunctions and prepositions).
6. Capitalize both parts of a hyphenated word (new as of 4/25/23).
7. Capitalize the ‘to’ in an infinitive (e.g., I Want To Play Guitar).

See AP Style Guide

Bluebook 21st Edition Capitalization Rules

Bluebook style capitalization is mainly used by lawyers. The capitalization rules are as follows:

1. Capitalize the first and the last word.
2. Capitalize nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs (including phrasal verbs such as “play with”), adverbs, and subordinate conjunctions.
3. Lowercase articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions, and prepositions of four letters or fewer.
4. Lowercase “to” in the infinitive (though not defined in the stylebook).

See BB Style Guide

American Medical Association (AMA) Manual of Style 11th Edition Capitalization Rules

AMA style capitalization is mainly used in the scientific community. The capitalization rules are as follows:

1. Capitalize the first and the last word of titles and subtitles.
2. Capitalize nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs (including phrasal verbs such as “play with”), adverbs, and subordinate conjunctions (major words).
3. Lowercase articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions, and prepositions of four letters or fewer.
4. Lowercase “to” in the infinitive.
5. Lowercase the second word in a hyphenated compound when it is a prefix or suffix (e.g., “Anti-itch”,”world-wide”) or part of a single word.
6. Capitalize the second word in a hyphenated compound if both words are equal and not suffices or prefixes (e.g., “Cost-Benefit”)
7. Capitalize the first non-Greek letter after a lowercase Greek letter (e.g., “ω-Bromohexanoic”)
8. Lowercase the first non-Greek letter after a capital Greek letter (e.g., “Δ-9-tetrahydrocannabinol”)
9. Capitalize the genus but not the species epithet

See AMA Style Guide

NY Times Style Capitalization Rules

NY Times style capitalization is mainly used by writers for the NY Times but is also used widely throughout journalism. The capitalization rules are as follows:

1. Capitalize major words, e.g. nouns, pronouns, verbs.
2. Capitalize the first and the last word.
3. Capitalize nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs (including phrasal verbs such as “play with”), adverbs, and subordinate conjunctions.
4. Lowercase articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions, and prepositions.

See NY Times Style Guide

Wikipedia Style Capitalization Rules

Wikipedia editors must follow certain capitalization rules for any posts to Wikipedia. The capitalization rules are as follows:

1. Capitalize major words, e.g. nouns, pronouns, verbs.
2. Capitalize the first and the last word.
3. Capitalize nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and subordinate conjunctions.
4. Lowercase indefinite and definite articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions, and prepositions.
5. Prepositions that contain five letters or more.
6. The word “to” in infinitives.

See Wikipedia Style Guide

Languages: EN, ES, DE

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An Etymological Tale of Two Scripts

A printers workshop, 1568. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons [Public domain])

To start a sentence, one uses an uppercase letter to begin the first word. But where do the opaque terms uppercase and lowercase come from? To understand why capital letters are “uppercase”—and their smaller counterparts are “lowercase”—one has to look back in history to early handwriting and follow that tale to the printing press. The existence and etymology (the history of a word) of uppercase and lowercase is a fascinating tale.

 

The Emergence of Minuscule Letters

Paleography is the study of historical handwriting, and paleographers have traced how the modern type cases (sometimes misnomered as fonts) came into being. If you have seen an Ancient Roman inscription, you probably noticed that the Latin alphabet was carved in capital letters of equal size. This writing is known as Roman majuscule—majuscule meaning an all-capital script.

As the Romance languages developed out of Latin, the written alphabet also evolved. After the fall of Rome, many Latin texts in the early Middle Ages used a style known as uncial script—more rounded capitals as seen in Gothic fonts. A new type of script known as half-uncial also developed around the same time. Also rounded, this script changed the form of some letters to resemble the lowercase letters of today: the letters b and d acquired their long stems in this form. Both scripts were used throughout the medieval period.

The famous Irish “Book of Kells” was written in uncial script circa 800 CE. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons [Public domain])

Lowercase letters as we know them—called minuscule script—can be traced to the court of the early French King Charlemagne. The newly developed minuscule script became a faster and more appealing writing system for monks and scholars. As trained scribes, they produced most medieval manuscripts. A manuscript of a book could take months to copy by hand, so the new script was more efficient than the older painstaking uncial script. However, before 1300, most European languages had no capitalization rules, so the shift in scripts was a development in handwriting rather than language.

Page of a medieval Gospel written in Carolingian minuscule. (Photo: Cropped from Wikimedia Commons [Public domain])

Type and the Printing Press

A Dutch printing press in the 17th century. Note the type cases behind the man on the right. (Photo: Stock Photos from EVERETT COLLECTION/Shutterstock)

In 1439, Johannes Gutenberg introduced the letterpress printing process to Europe, and his invention quickly spread. The early printing press used movable metal type which could be painstakingly arranged to print a text. Each letter was an individual piece, and printers would keep many sizes and fonts on hand. Writing each word backwards, typesetters bound a page’s worth of words together in a frame. Ink was then applied to the frame, and the printing press then pressed it into paper. While still a laborious process by our standards today, the ability to quickly produce multiples of a work was revolutionary.

Metal movable type sorted in a case. Type is being assembled in a frame for printing. (Photo: Cropped from Wikimedia Commons [CC BY-SA 3.0])

Early printers stored their type in wooden cases—flat trays with many small compartments for sorting letters and symbols. These cases could be stored in drawers, but printers needed their most useful alphabets within reach. Cases were often raised on tables and angled for easy access. The capital letters were typically stored in the higher, or upper, case. The minuscules were in the lower. This case storage system gave rise to the names uppercase and lowercase to refer to majuscule and minuscule scripts, respectively. The terms were first used in the 18th century and filtered into public usage thereafter. The 18th century was also a time of grammatical standardization within the English language. Therefore, uppercase and lowercase letters gained new names and standardized grammatical uses, such as uppercase for proper nouns.

A typesetter’s sorting cases, 1740. (Photo: Cropped from Wikimedia Commons [Public domain])

By the 19th century, many small towns had their own presses, printers, and publishers. Printing presses with movable type were even used into the early 20th century, especially for newspapers. Type setters worked swiftly to spell out articles as they came in. The frames then went to the press—now mechanized with automatic rolls of paper and machine inking. While computer printing did eventually render the letterpress printer obsolete, artists and antiquarians have since revived many antique presses for modern use. The terms uppercase and lowercase still remain ubiquitous in the age of typing and digital fonts, many of which (like Times New Roman) pay homage to the paleography of the past.

An example of printed typeface using mixed majuscule and minuscule scripts printed in London, 1656. (Photo: Madeleine Muzdakis / My Modern Met)

Related Articles:

Letterpress Printing: From Its Beginnings to the Artisan Revival Going on Today

16th-Century Calligraphy Manual Available for Free Download

Designer Creates Whimsical New Font That Changes Shape as You Type

UX-design: lowercase and uppercase letters | by Ira Motorina

5 min read

·

Dec 7, 2017

According to Apple, Android and Microsoft. Useful for UX writers and designers who work with English interfaces

See the difference between the messages? There are more capital letters on the left than on the right. Big «o», small «o». But who cares, right?

If you are writing text for an application or a website, there should be a difference for you.

Uppercase and uppercase letters are important. They affect readability, comprehension, and usability. And even on how people perceive the brand.

Almost all English-language products or websites use two styles: Title Case or Sentence Case.

Title Case — Each word starts with a capital letter. Exceptions are articles, numbers, conjunctions. This is how headlines are written in the media: Bloomberg and CNN, books and interfaces;

Sentence Case — only the first word begins with a capital letter. So writes the BBC, Google.

If you use Apple technology, you have noticed that all words in interface messages begin with capital letters. Apple’s guidelines recommend capitalizing words in UI elements such as messages, buttons, and menus.

If you use Android, you have seen that they write in sentences — only the first word is capitalized: this is what the company’s guidelines advise.

Notifications in iOS and Android

Let’s look at when and how to use the Title Case and Sentence Case styles in UX texts. Go.

Symmetric

Some designers think Title Case is better because it is symmetrical. And capital letters at the beginning of each word give rhythm to the phrase:

Visual weight

Capital letters are like raised hands 🙌, they attract attention. If you use different styles, Title Case is what you need.

Notice how the title on the left pop-up seems larger than the right one? I’m sure they’ll read it for sure0033

Significance

Capital letters seem important and formal. For example, the New York Times or USA.gov use capital letters in their titles. It’s professional. Seriously. Authoritatively.

Capital letters like a classic suit. Some brands need it.

Example: If you are in business process security, capital letters are fine for the interface. They inspire confidence and speak of professionalism.

Imagine that you are the CEO and you need to choose a style for the interface text. Which one seems more professional to you: Sentence Case or Title Case ?

Simplicity

Reading sentences is easy and familiar. Long sentences do not seem complicated and heavy: they have a clear beginning and end.

Example: Can you imagine how hard it is to read words in a long text?

The text on the screenshot is hard to read due to capital letters

Clarity

Google UX writer Sue Factor says that Sentence Case is a clear style for programmers and designers: each phrase begins with a capital letter. This rule is.

But the Title Case is not always clear for those who develop the interface. For example, is the tab name a title? What about mail settings: header or body text?

Also, there are no clear rules for Title Case. For example, how to write «from» or «through»: with a capital or capital? And the articles?

Example: Apple guideline. It contains tips on what words to capitalize.

Okay, Apple. Do we write the preposition «O» in capital letters or not?

Title Case — there are rules for the text, but they are not always clear and understandable.

Sentence Case — there is one rule, and you definitely won’t confuse anything.

Friendliness

Title Case is formal, while Sentence Case is simple and friendly text.

Example: At Dropbox, we use Sentence Case because we want to be informal. We believe our product voice is different from the competition and we use Sentence Case to stand out.

Clear proper names

In Sentence Case, proper names are visible at a glance. (Proper names are a part of speech that is always capitalized. For example, Microsoft or the New York Times).

Many companies capitalize product names or features. For example «Mail», «Calendar», «Spark». If you use capital letters everywhere, it is not clear where the name is, and where it is just a word.

Is the calendar my calendar or is it another application? Yes, and here is the main option — add to my Calendar.

Title Case and Sentence Case are two popular ways to write text for apps and websites. But not the only ones.

Example: on Windows Phone 8, almost all interface text is in lowercase. Even titles and buttons .

Example: GIPHY — the text is typed in capitals only. This makes sense, since memes and gifs are usually written in capital letters.

Title Case and Sentence Case have pros and cons. No matter what style you choose, make sure it aligns with your brand’s voice.

The worst thing you can do is not define standards and write inconsistent text. This can become a problem in the future: if users ever see inconsistencies in the interface, they will begin to lose trust in the brand.

What do you like about the interface: Title Case and Sentence Case? CAPS LOCK or uppercase? Or maybe you are a rebel and make up your own rules?

Share your opinions, write comments and questions on the topic. This is a translation of an article by Dropbox UX Writer John Saito

Telegram — about the text in the interface;

VKontakte — advice on working with text and clients;

Email newsletter — well, that’s all clear.

Found a typo? Send a screenshot to Telegram: @redachredach

Uppercase and lowercase letters / Sudo Null IT News Many of you have translated strings into “all uppercase” (uppercase), “all lowercase” (lowercase), “first capital, and the rest lowercase” (titlecase). Even more popular is the case-insensitive comparison operation. On a global scale, such operations can be quite non-trivial. The post is structured as a «collection of misconceptions» with counterexamples.

1. If I convert the string to uppercase or lowercase, the number of Unicode characters does not change.

No. The text may contain lowercase ligatures, which do not correspond to one character in upper case. For example, when translating to uppercase: fi (U+FB00) -> FI (U+0046, U+0049)

2. Ligatures are a perversion, no one uses them. If they are not taken into account, then I’m right.

No. Some letters with diacritics do not have an exact match in other case, so you have to use a combined character. Let’s say the Afrikaans language has the letter ʼn (U+0149). In upper case, it corresponds to a combination of two characters: (U+02BC, U+004E). If you come across a transliteration of Arabic text, you may encounter (U+1E96), which also does not have a single-character match in upper case, so you will have to replace it with (U+0048, U+0331). The Wakhi language has a letter (U+01F0) with a similar problem. You may argue that this is exotic, but there are 23,000 articles in Afrikaans on Wikipedia.

3. All right, but let’s consider a combined character (involving modifying or combining code points) as one character. Then the length will still be preserved.

No. There is, for example, the letter «escet» ß (U+00DF) in German. When converted to uppercase, it turns into two SS characters (U+0053, U+0053).

4. Okay, okay, got it. We will assume that the number of Unicode characters can increase, but not more than twice.

No. There are specific Greek letters, for example, (U+0390) that turn into three Unicode characters (U+0399, U+0308, U+0301)

5.

Let’s talk about titlecase. Everything is simple here: I took the first character from the word, translated it into uppercase, took all the subsequent ones, translated it into lowercase.

No. Let’s remember the same ligatures. If a word in lowercase begins with fl (U+FB02), then in uppercase the ligature becomes FL (U+0046, U+004C), but in titlecase it becomes Fl (U+0046, U+006C). The same with ß, but, theoretically, words cannot begin with it.

6. Those ligatures again! Well, we take the first character from the word, translate it into uppercase, if more than one character is obtained, then we leave the first one, and the rest back into lowercase. Then it will definitely work.

Won’t work. There is, for example, the digraph dz (U+01F3), which can be used in text in Polish, Slovak, Macedonian or Hungarian. In uppercase it corresponds to the digraph DZ (U+01F1), and in titlecase it corresponds to the digraph Dz (U+01F2). There are other digraphs. The Greek language, on the other hand, will please you with jokes with hypogegrammen and progegrammen (fortunately, this is rarely found in modern texts). In general, the uppercase and titlecase variants for a character can be different, and there are separate entries for them in the Unicode standard.

7. Good, but at least the result of converting a character’s case to uppercase or lowercase does not depend on its position in the word.

No. For example, the Greek capital sigma Σ (U+03A3) becomes a lowercase ς (U+03C2) at the end of a word and σ (U+03C3) in the middle.

8. Oh, okay, let’s process the Greek sigma separately. But in any case, the same character in the same position in the text is converted in the same way.

No. For example, in most Latin languages, the lower case for I (U+0049) is i (U+0069), but not in Turkish and Azeri. There, the lower case for I is ı (U+0131) and the capital case for i is İ (U+0130). In Turkey, because of this, enchanting bugs are sometimes observed in a variety of software. And if you come across a text in Lithuanian with accents, then, for example, a capital Ì (U + 00CC), which will turn not into ì (U + 00EC), but into (U + 0069, U + 0307, ​​U + 0300) . In general, the result of the conversion also depends on the language. Most of the complex cases are described here.

9. What a horror! Well, let’s now correctly convert to uppercase and lowercase. Comparing two words case-insensitively is not a problem: we translate both into lowercase and compare.

There are also many pitfalls that follow from the above. For example, it will not work with German straße and STRASSE (the former will not change, the latter will turn into strasse). There will also be problems with many of the other letters described above.

10. M-yes… Maybe then everything is in uppercase?

And it won’t always work (although much more often). But, say, if you come across the notation STRAE (yes, there is a big escet in German and Unicode too), it will not match straße. For comparisons, letters are converted according to a special Unicode table — CaseFolding, according to which both ß and SS will turn into ss.

11. A-ah-ah, this is some kind of kapets!

Here I agree.