Title Case Converter: Capitalize Titles Correctly

What title case is

Title case is the capitalization used for the names of books, films, songs and articles, and for many headlines. Important words start with a capital. Small joining words do not. “Gone with the Wind” and “A Tale of Two Cities” are both written in title case.

The rules this converter follows

Paste a title and it is converted as soon as it lands in the box. The tool applies these rules:

Capitalize the first and last word, whatever they are.
Capitalize every main word: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and pronouns. That includes short verbs such as “is” and “be”.
Keep small words lowercase in the middle of a title: a, an, and, as, at, but, by, en, for, if, in, nor, of, on, or, per, so, the, to, up, via, vs, yet.
Capitalize after a colon, so a subtitle starts with a capital.
Capitalize the first part of a hyphenated word, as in “On-Call” or “Step-by-Step”.

Each line is treated as its own title. You can paste a whole list of headlines and convert them together.

Examples

You paste	You get
the lord of the rings	The Lord of the Rings
a beginner’s guide to the stock market	A Beginner’s Guide to the Stock Market
star wars: the empire strikes back	Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR	What Are You Waiting For

How the style guides differ

The main style guides agree on the basics and disagree on prepositions.

AP (news writing) capitalizes any word of four letters or more, including prepositions such as “with” and “from”.
APA (academic papers) also capitalizes words of four letters or more.
Chicago (books) lowercases all prepositions, even long ones such as “between”.
MLA (humanities) follows the same approach as Chicago.

This tool’s output suits AP and APA as it stands. If you are following Chicago or MLA, check the longer prepositions after converting.

Things to check by hand

The converter lowercases everything before applying the rules. That fixes titles typed in capitals, but it also means acronyms and unusual brand names need a second look: “nasa” should be “NASA” and “Iphone” should be “iPhone”.

Where title case is used

Blog post and article headlines
Book, film, album and song titles
YouTube video titles and podcast episodes
Email subject lines
Section headings in reports and presentations

For body text and most interface text, sentence case is the better fit.

Title Case Converter: questions and answers

What is title case?

Title case is a capitalization style for headings and the names of works. The first word, the last word and every main word start with a capital letter. Short articles, conjunctions and prepositions such as a, and, of and the stay lowercase.

Which words are not capitalized in title case?

This converter keeps these words lowercase when they appear in the middle of a title: a, an, and, as, at, but, by, en, for, if, in, nor, of, on, or, per, so, the, to, up, via, vs and yet. They are still capitalized as the first or last word and after a colon.

Is this AP, APA, Chicago or MLA title case?

The output matches AP and APA for most titles, because both capitalize words of four letters or more. Chicago and MLA keep all prepositions lowercase whatever their length, so for those styles you should lowercase words such as with, from, over and between by hand.

Should 'is' be capitalized in a title?

Yes. 'Is' is a verb, and verbs are always capitalized in title case no matter how short they are. The same goes for 'are', 'was' and 'be'. The converter capitalizes all of them.

What is the difference between title case and capitalized case?

Capitalized case puts a capital on every single word, including small ones: 'The Lord Of The Rings'. Title case leaves the small words lowercase: 'The Lord of the Rings'. Title case is the correct style for published headlines.

Title Case Converter

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