What this calculator does
A title case converter capitalises the first letter of each significant word in a piece of text, while leaving short minor words, such as a, the, and and of, in lower case unless they open or close the title. This is the convention used for headlines, book and film titles, and most heading styles, and it is easy to get subtly wrong by hand, especially with a long or unfamiliar title.
Title case has more than one accepted rule set, and style guides disagree on the exact list of words to lower case and on details like hyphenated words. This tool follows AP style, the convention used by most news headlines: words of three letters or fewer from a fixed list of minor words (articles, short conjunctions and short prepositions, such as a, an, the, and, but, or, for, in, on and to) stay lower case unless they are the first or last word of the title, and every other word is capitalised.
The formula
The text is split into words. Each word is checked against a fixed list of minor words (short articles, conjunctions and prepositions). A word on that list stays lower case unless it is the first or last word in the title; every other word has its first letter capitalised and the rest lower-cased.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Title case | A capitalisation style where major words are capitalised and short minor words are left lower case, used for headlines and titles. |
| Minor word | A short article, conjunction or preposition, such as a, an, the, and, but, or, for, in, on or to, that AP style keeps lower case unless it opens or closes the title. |
| AP style | The title-case convention set out in the Associated Press Stylebook, one of the most widely used rule sets for headline capitalisation. |
The inputs explained
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Text | The text to convert to title case. Minor words are recognised by matching the whole word, ignoring surrounding punctuation and case. |
When to use it
Formatting a page heading or blog title
Converting a working title typed in whatever case felt natural into consistent title case matches the formatting readers expect from headlines and article titles.
Checking a title someone else wrote
Running an existing heading through the converter is a quick check for stray capitals or lower-case minor words that should have been capitalised, without having to look up the style rule by hand each time.
Standardising titles across a document or spreadsheet
A list of headings typed inconsistently, some in all caps, some in sentence case, converts to one consistent title-case style in a single pass.
Worked examples
Every figure in the tables below is produced by this page’s own calculator at build time, so the numbers and the tool always agree. Select any row to load that scenario.
How does title case handle different kinds of titles?
A simple heading, a title starting with a minor word, and a title ending in one, each run through the converter.
| Text entered | Title case result |
|---|---|
| the lord of the rings | The Lord of the Rings |
| a tale of two cities | A Tale of Two Cities |
| what dreams are made of | What Dreams Are Made Of |
| THE QUICK BROWN FOX | The Quick Brown Fox |
Questions
Why is this word capitalised when I expected it lower case, or the other way round?
This tool follows AP style specifically: minor words (short articles, conjunctions and prepositions) stay lower case unless they are the first or last word of the title. Other style guides, such as Chicago style, use a different and sometimes longer list of minor words, so a word treated as minor here may be capitalised under a different convention.
Does this handle punctuation like colons and hyphens correctly?
Word boundaries are found by splitting on whitespace, and minor-word matching ignores surrounding punctuation, so a word followed by a colon or comma is still recognised correctly. Hyphenated compound words are treated as a single word and capitalised at their first letter only, which is one common convention but not the only one style guides use.
What counts as a minor word under AP style?
Short articles (a, an, the), short conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, for, so, yet) and short prepositions of three letters or fewer (in, on, to, at, by, up, as, via, and similar) stay lower case unless they open or close the title. Longer prepositions, such as "with" or "about", are capitalised like any other major word.
Is title case the same as capitalising every word?
No, that is sometimes called start case rather than title case. Title case specifically leaves minor words lower case in the middle of a title; capitalising every single word regardless of length is a different, simpler convention that most style guides do not use for headlines.
To shrink text into small Unicode capitals instead of standard capitalisation, see the small text generator.