The Best Headline Capitalization Rules and Tools
There’s lots of great advice on the importance of headlines and optimizing headlines for more traffic and a better click-through rate. We know because we’ve created some of it! But sometimes content creators – amateurs and pros - just want to know the rules of headline capitalization, which is an under-served aspect of content writing.
Fortunately, there is a consensus regarding the basics of writing headlines. Where there are differences, four main headline formatting styles exist.
Associated Press style
APA style
Chicago Manual style, and
MLA style
There is also the New York Times style, Wikipedia has its own approach to headlines, and you can write titles in sentence case if you wish.
The best way to approach headline formatting is to adopt the style most frequently used in your field. We’ve put together some practical advice that you can apply right away to enhance your content marketing. We’ll help you create a more professional appearance through proper, consistent headline capitalization. Here’s an overview of the rules and styles of headline capitalization so you can create more consistent, more professional-looking content.
The Rules of Headline Capitalization
It doesn’t matter which rules of headline capitalization you follow, but your content will look more professional, and thus more authoritative if you follow a consistent style. Before describing the methods and their differences, it’s wise to look at where there is a consensus. Whichever headline style (aka title case) you use, it will probably follow these rules:
Capitalize the first word.
Capitalize the last word. (Except in APA style, in which a short preposition will be lowercase, even if it is the last word of a headline).
Capitalize important words, which are considered to be:
adjectives (such as slow, quick)
verbs (such as talk, communicate)
nouns (such as smartphone, network, hammer)
pronouns (such as she, he, they)
subordinating conjunctions – stay with us. (such as before, after, while, where)
verbs (such as talk, communicate)
With those words above getting capital letters, the parts of speech below should be lowercase:
Articles (such as a, an, the)
Coordinating conjunctions (such as but, for)
Prepositions with fewer than five letters (such as at, by, from)
Whichever official headline style you choose, get familiar with these general headline capitalization rules first. To determine which form you’ll use, know that a) some are used primarily by particular industries, and b) the main differences lie in which prepositions need to be in lowercase. Here are the main styles and their characteristics:
Associated Press style – the journalists’ favorite, this is often used by news organizations. Journalists capitalize prepositions with four letters or more. If a preposition has three letters or fewer, don’t capitalize it. (in, on, off, out)
APA style – this is an academic style, often used for scholarly journal articles and books. If you’re citing sources in the field of social or behavioral sciences, you’ll probably want to use this. To write headlines in this style, capitalize prepositions that have five letters or more.
MLA style – another primarily academic style, this is used for academic papers. If you’re writing headlines in this style, however, don’t capitalize any prepositions, regardless of length.
Chicago Manual style – this tends to be used for comprehensive, in-depth writing. Here, you do not capitalize words based on their length. Don’t capitalize any prepositions.
New York Times style – the New York Times has singled out some prepositions for special treatment (including at, by, in, for). It’s not a length thing, though. You’d lowercase up, off, and out in this style. They have similar preferences when it comes to coordinating conjunctions, too, which means that it’s simplest to acquire the New York Times style guide and refer to it as necessary if you want to write using this headline style.
Wikipedia style – when Wikipedia writers encounter a preposition with four letters or fewer, they make it lowercase. They capitalize the first word of a compound preposition. When it comes to hyphenated compounds, they look for reliable sources and emulate them. The key is to look for and aim for consistency.
Sentence case – here, you capitalize as if you were writing any other sentence, such as might appear in the middle of a paragraph. Proper nouns get capital letters.
The Best Headline Capitalization Tools
Even knowing which headline rules you are following, it can be tricky to apply them because of contextual considerations. According to the context, the same word can be an adverb or an adjective. An example is: “Stand by Me” versus “Stand By for Action.” In the former, by is a preposition, but, in the latter, it’s an adverb. Therefore, the former is lowercase, while the latter is not.
If you want to spend more time writing and less time at night school for grammar lessons, we’ve curated some time-saving headline capitalization tools. These will help you generate titles in the appropriate format for your content writing. And, if you desire, they will help you learn about headline capitalization at the same time.
Capitalize My Title
Easy to use, this headline capitalization tool gets straight into formatting your title according to all the styles we’ve discussed. It will also transform your text into upper case or lower case, capitalize the first letter of every word, or turn your text into “Alt” case, in which every other letter is capitalized. Capitalize My Title provides a quick reminder and examples of capitalization rules for your typing pleasure, and it will analyze your headline for readability, SEO, and sentiment, too. Because it manages to be robust and easy-to-use, this is our pick of headline capitalization tools.
Headline Capitalization
This tool gets straight to the point with a clear display and fast loading time. It’s good for anyone who doesn’t want to get distracted by the temptation to tweak their headline for SEO (though this time is generally not wasted). If you aim to get the capital letters in the right places and move on quickly, give this tool a try.
Title Case Converter
This converter describes itself as a smart tool, and we have to agree. It lets you convert your title into the main styles that we have discussed. And it also provides some neat options:
keep words that are all in CAPS
enter multiple titles on different lines
have the converter show explanations, which will help you learn what you’re doing right and what you can improve
highlight the changes the converter makes
have it convert your text as soon as you paste it into the converter
Note that, unlike some other converters, you need to scroll down to get your results.
Professional Editing’s Title Capitalization Tool
This is quick to use and attractive if a little small. It keeps headline formatting simple while providing the functionality you need. It will convert your headline into AP, General, APA/MLA, and Chicago styles, as well as offering sentence case, upper case, first letter capitalization, and lower case.
At Blog Hands, we handle things like headline capitalization day in and day out. If you don’t want to engage with it yet, that’s fine - we can take it on for you. There’s no headline that we can’t capitalize.
We are specialists in headline optimization, SEO, and content creation for various industries and media. You can order posts from the site and let us help you reach out to your clients or customers. Our experienced team is looking forward to learning how we can provide you with what you need to achieve your goals, and we’ll get it right, right from the headline.
If your colleagues send you emails with questionable headline capitalization, please forward this article to spread the love of correct grammar and mutual understanding. In all seriousness, professionally-written headlines reflect well on organizations. Since it’s the first thing that many potential customers will see, it’s worth getting it right. This is why so many firms hire out content writing to trained professionals. For more information or to get started, fill out our quick contact form.
