Should your headline read "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog" or "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"? Both are correct somewhere — but using the wrong one in the wrong place marks you as an amateur. Here is how to choose.
What Each Style Means
- Title Case: capitalize the first letter of most words — The Quick Brown Fox Jumps over the Lazy Dog. (Note "over" and "the" stay lowercase; more on that below.) Traditional for US headlines, book titles, and presentation slides.
- Sentence case: capitalize only the first word and proper nouns — The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Standard for body text, and increasingly popular for modern headlines.
The visual difference is tone: Title Case feels formal and emphatic; sentence case feels calm and conversational.
Title Case Rules (the Tricky Parts)
Title case is not "capitalize every word." The major US style guides (APA, Chicago, AP) agree on these rules:
- Always capitalize the first and last word, whatever they are.
- Capitalize major words: nouns, verbs (including short ones like "is" and "be"), adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns.
- Lowercase minor words in the middle: articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, for, nor), and short prepositions (in, on, at, to, of, by, up).
- Prepositions of four or more letters are capitalized in Chicago style (Between, Through) but not in AP style — pick one guide and stick with it.
- Capitalize both halves of hyphenated compounds in most styles: Well-Known, Up-to-Date.
The most common mistake is capitalizing everything, including "and" and "the." If your headline looks like The Quick Brown Fox And The Lazy Dog, the small words give you away.
Which One Should You Use?
| Context | Recommended | Why |
|---|---|---|
| US news headlines, book titles | Title Case | Industry standard (AP, Chicago) |
| UK news headlines | Sentence case | Guardian, BBC, Economist house style |
| Blog post titles | Either — be consistent | Tech blogs trend sentence case; traditional blogs trend Title Case |
| Academic paper titles | Follow the required guide | APA uses Title Case; many science journals use sentence case |
| Presentation slides | Title Case | Reads as more formal and structured |
| Email subject lines | Sentence case | Feels personal; Title Case can read as marketing spam |
| Resume section headers | Title Case | Conventional and scannable |
The trend is worth noting: sentence case has been gaining ground for a decade, especially in tech and UK media, because it is easier to get right and feels more approachable. When no guide dictates the choice, sentence case is the safer default — there are simply fewer rules to break.
The Golden Rule: Consistency
Whichever style you choose, apply it everywhere: every headline on the site, every slide in the deck, every chapter title in the document. Mixed capitalization ("Our Services" on one page, "Our services" on the next) looks sloppier than either style done consistently.
Converting existing text is where most people slip up — retyping headlines by hand invites errors. Paste your text into our free case converter instead: it applies proper Title Case rules (including the small-word exceptions) or clean Sentence case in one click.
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