Title Case Rules and Conventions
Paste a headline and this tool applies Title Case: major words capitalised, minor words left lowercase, and the first and last word always capitalised regardless of type. The result updates as you type.
Title Case looks simple until you try to apply it consistently. The rule everyone remembers is “capitalise the important words”, and the disagreements are all about which words count as important.
The rules this tool applies
Every word is capitalised except a defined set of minor words: articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, for, so, yet), and short prepositions (at, by, in, of, on, to, up, as, via).
The first and last words of a title are always capitalised, whatever they are. “Of Mice and Men” capitalises the opening “Of” for exactly this reason, and a title ending in “to” would capitalise that too.
Everything else — nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, and longer prepositions — is capitalised. This is the most commonly used convention across the major style guides, though each differs in details.
Why style guides disagree
The main disagreement is about preposition length. Chicago style lowercases all prepositions regardless of length, so “Running Through the Woods” keeps “through” lowercase. AP style capitalises prepositions of four letters or more, so the same title becomes “Running Through the Woods” with a capital T.
APA style uses a different threshold again, capitalising words of four letters or more including prepositions and conjunctions. MLA broadly follows Chicago.
This tool uses a short minor-word list, which sits closest to AP and to common web practice. If you follow a specific academic style guide strictly, check the output against its rules — the disagreements are genuine and no automated converter satisfies all of them at once.
Title Case versus sentence case for the web
Sentence case — capitalising only the first word and proper nouns — has become the dominant convention on the web, particularly outside US publishing. Most modern design systems and UK style guides specify it.
The practical argument is consistency. Title Case rules are fiddly enough that people apply them inconsistently across a site, producing headings that look subtly mismatched. Sentence case has one rule and is hard to get wrong.
Title Case still suits editorial headlines, book and article titles, and US-facing publications where readers expect it. If you use it, use it consistently — the Case Converter covers both if you need to switch a site's convention.
Title Case and SEO
Capitalisation has no effect on rankings. Search engines are case-insensitive when matching, so “Best Running Shoes” and “best running shoes” are the same query and the same content as far as relevance is concerned.
The effect is on click-through. A properly capitalised title looks more professional in search results than one with inconsistent capitalisation, and all-caps titles look like shouting and tend to underperform.
There is one place capitalisation genuinely matters technically, and it is not the title: URLs. Mixed-case URLs can create duplicate pages on case-sensitive servers, which is why slugs should always be lowercase — the URL Slug Generator handles that conversion.
Things to check after converting
- Acronyms — SEO, HTML and API should stay fully capitalised, but a converter will render them as Seo, Html and Api.
- Brand names with deliberate casing — iPhone, eBay and similar need restoring by hand.
- Hyphenated compounds — style guides differ on whether to capitalise the word after a hyphen.
- The first word after a colon, which most guides capitalise regardless of what it is.
- Proper nouns that happen to match a minor word, such as a company called “The”.
Where to use the result
For a page title tag, check the length as well as the capitalisation — the SEO Title Generator produces variants with character counts, and the Character Counter checks anything against the roughly 60-character display limit.
For an on-page heading, the H1 Generator writes options suited to the page rather than to the search results page, since the two serve different readers.
Frequently asked questions
Which words stay lowercase in Title Case?
Articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, for, so, yet) and short prepositions (at, by, in, of, on, to, up). The first and last words of the title are always capitalised regardless.
Why does my output differ from another title case tool?
Style guides genuinely disagree, mainly on preposition length. Chicago lowercases all prepositions; AP capitalises those of four or more letters; APA uses a four-letter threshold across word types. No converter satisfies all of them.
Does capitalisation affect SEO?
Not for rankings — search matching is case-insensitive. It affects how professional your result looks in search, which influences clicks. URLs are the exception, where lowercase genuinely matters to avoid duplicate pages.
Why are my acronyms lowercased?
The converter cannot distinguish an acronym from an ordinary word, so SEO becomes Seo. Restore acronyms and deliberately-cased brand names like iPhone by hand after converting.
Should I use Title Case or sentence case?
Title Case suits editorial headlines and US publishing conventions; sentence case is the dominant web convention elsewhere and is easier to apply consistently. Either is fine as long as you use one throughout.