Title Case Converter

What is title case?

Title case capitalizes the principal words in a title or heading and lowercases the minor words (articles, conjunctions, short prepositions). The exact rules vary by style guide — there's no universal standard. The three big ones in US English are APA, Chicago, and AP.

APA style (American Psychological Association)

Used in academic and scientific writing — psychology, social sciences, education. Rules:

• Capitalize the first word of the title and any subtitle.
• Capitalize the first word after a colon or em dash.
• Capitalize all major words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns).
• Capitalize all words 4+ letters long.
• Lowercase short conjunctions, prepositions, articles (a, an, and, as, at, but, by, for, in, of, on, or, the, to, up, etc.).
• Always capitalize the first and last word.

Example: The Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Cognitive Performance.

Chicago Manual of Style

Used in book publishing, humanities, and many magazines. Rules:

• Capitalize first and last words.
• Capitalize all major words.
• Lowercase articles (a, an, the), conjunctions (and, but, or, for, nor), and prepositions (regardless of length, in some Chicago variants — others use a length cutoff).
• Capitalize first word after a colon.
• Capitalize both parts of hyphenated compounds (Self-Conscious, World-Class).

Example: The Catcher in the Rye(note: “in” and “the” both lowercase as a preposition and article).

AP style (Associated Press)

Used in journalism, news writing. Rules:

• Capitalize first and last words.
• Capitalize all major words.
• Lowercase articles, short conjunctions, and prepositions of 3 or fewer letters.
• Capitalize prepositions of 4+ letters (Across, Through, Behind, etc.) — this is AP's biggest difference from APA/Chicago.
• Capitalize all verbs, including short ones like “Is” and “Be.”

Example: Senator Walks Through Crowd to Address Voters(note “Through” capitalized — it's 7 letters).

Simple title case (every word)

Capitalize the first letter of every word, no exceptions. Rare in formal writing but common in some online contexts and casual headings. The most predictable rule but the least “correct” by traditional style standards.

Sentence case (modern web default)

Capitalize only the first word and any proper nouns — like a normal sentence. Most modern websites, social media, and casual writing use sentence case. It feels more conversational, easier to read, and reduces visual noise.

Examples of sentence-case usage:

• YouTube video titles
• Most blog post headlines (e.g., Stripe, Linear, Vercel)
• Twitter/X posts
• UI buttons and menu items
• Email subject lines (often)

When to use each case

• UPPERCASE: emphasis, acronyms, signs, sometimes legal disclaimers. Don't use for body text — it's harder to read.
• lowercase: deliberate stylistic choice (e.g., bell hooks, e e cummings, modern brand names like “adidas”). Generally informal.
• Title Case: formal titles, book/article names, legal headings.
• Sentence case: most everything else. The modern default for the web.
• aLtErNaTiNg cAsE: meme/sarcastic ("SpongeBob mocking"). Not for serious writing.
• iNVERSE cASE: a typo / stuck Caps Lock indicator. Useful for fixing accidentally-pressed Caps Lock.

Edge cases to know

• Acronyms stay all-caps in title case (NASA, FBI, USA).
• Brand names with custom capitalization follow brand rules, not style guides (iPhone, eBay, IKEA, NASA).
• Hyphenated words: usually capitalize both parts (Self-Conscious, Mother-in-Law). Some styles lowercase the second part of compound modifiers.
• Words with apostrophes: capitalize the part before the apostrophe; what comes after follows the same word (Won't, O'Brien). The apostrophe doesn't reset case.
• Subtitles after colons: capitalize the first word of subtitles in all major styles.

Practical writing tools

For other text utilities: Word Counter for length and reading time, Character Counter for social media limits, and URL Slug Generator when you need to convert a title into a clean URL slug.