What Is Title Case? Rules and Examples
·5 min read
What Is Title Case?
Title case is a capitalization style where most words in a title or heading are capitalized. It is commonly used in book titles, article headlines, movie names, and other formal contexts.
The Basic Rules of Title Case
Title case follows a straightforward set of rules:
- Always capitalize the first and last word of the title, regardless of their part of speech.
- Capitalize all major words — nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns.
- Do not capitalize short prepositions such as at, by, for, in, of, on, to, and up.
- Do not capitalize articles — a, an, and the — unless they appear at the beginning of the title.
- Do not capitalize coordinating conjunctions — and, but, or, nor, for, so, and yet.
Title Case Examples
Here are some examples of title case applied correctly:
- The Lord of the Rings
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
- A Brief History of Time
- Gone with the Wind
Title Case vs. Sentence Case
Title case capitalizes most words, while sentence case only capitalizes the first word and proper nouns. For example:
- Title case: The Quick Brown Fox Jumps over the Lazy Dog
- Sentence case: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
When to Use Title Case
Title case is standard for:
- Book, film, and song titles
- Newspaper and magazine headlines
- Chapter and section headings in formal documents
- Names of companies and products
Use Our Free Title Case Converter
Manually capitalizing a long title can be tedious and error-prone. Our free title case converter instantly converts any text into correctly formatted title case, following standard rules.