Convert text to Title Case — capitalize the first letter of every important word for headings, book titles, and headlines.
how to write a book title → How to Write a Book Title
Title Case — capitalising the first letter of every important word — is the standard for book titles, song titles, movie titles, headlines, chapter headings, and academic paper titles. The rules vary slightly between style guides (AP, Chicago, APA), but the core convention is shared.
Our converter follows AP style by default: capitalise everything except articles (a, an, the), short prepositions (of, in, to, at, by, on, for, up), and coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor) — unless they're the first or last word.
"How to Win Friends and Influence People", "The Catcher in the Rye", "Pride and Prejudice". Title Case is the default convention for published works.
Most academic style guides recommend Title Case for chapter and section headings. Body subheadings vary — APA uses Title Case at top levels and Sentence case for nested headings.
AP-style press releases and traditional newspaper headlines use Title Case. Modern web journalism (BuzzFeed, Vox) increasingly uses Sentence case for a more conversational tone.
Product names, course titles, and event names are conventionally Title Case in marketing copy.
Title Case in bullet points draws the eye to each item's key term, making lists scannable at a glance.
The tool tokenizes input text into words using Unicode word boundaries. Each word is then checked against a configurable list of lowercase exceptions (articles, coordinating conjunctions, and short prepositions — typically 3 letters or fewer, e.g., a, an, the, and, but, for, nor, or, so, yet, at, by, for, in, of, on, to, up, as, it). The first and last words of the string are always capitalized, regardless of the exception list. Acronyms (e.g., NASA) are preserved if they are already uppercase — the tool does not downcase them first. Words with internal capitals (e.g., iPhone) are left unchanged. The default logic follows AP style, but the rule set can be tuned programmatically. The algorithm does not rely on simple string methods; it uses proper word segmentation to handle punctuation, possessives, and hyphenated compounds (e.g., Part-Time → both parts capitalized).
Compared to other title case methods, this tool gives AP-style results with minimal effort.
| This tool | Microsoft Word Title Case | Manual Editing | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accuracy | Follows AP exception list; handles acronyms and hyphenated words. | Word's algorithm capitalizes every word, ignoring exceptions like 'the' or 'and'. | Fully customizable but error-prone and time-consuming. |
| Ease of Use | One click — paste and copy. | Apply via Format > Change Case, but no real-time preview. | Must manually capitalize each word; no automation. |
| Speed | Instant conversion of any text length. | Works on entire document; slower for large selections. | Very slow for any text over a few words. |
| Customization | Exception list can be modified (by developer). | No customization of exceptions. | Total control, but requires careful review. |
Title case conventions emerged in medieval manuscript culture, where scribes highlighted initial letters. Modern English title case was formalized by style guides in the 20th century. The Associated Press Stylebook (first published 1953) established the widely used rule of capitalizing major words while leaving articles, conjunctions, and short prepositions lowercase — a system adopted by many news outlets and publishers. Earlier guides like the Chicago Manual of Style (1906) offered different rules, but AP's concise approach became the default for digital text conversions, balancing readability and typographic elegance.
AP capitalises words of 4+ letters and keeps short prepositions/articles lowercase. Chicago is similar but capitalises some additional words by tradition. APA capitalises words of 4+ letters in titles, but uses Sentence case for headings within papers. Our converter follows AP style by default — close enough for most non-academic uses.
Articles (a, an, the), short prepositions (of, in, to, at, on, for), and coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor) are lowercased mid-title because they're functional rather than meaningful — the eye glides over them while content words pop.
Convention varies. AP capitalises both halves of hyphenated compounds in titles ("Self-Care"); Chicago capitalises only the first half ("Self-care"). Our converter capitalises both sides; edit manually if you need Chicago.
Almost. "Capital Case" usually means capitalising every word — even short prepositions. "Title Case" lowercases short connectors. The terms are sometimes used interchangeably; the AP / Chicago / APA versions are the formally-defined ones.
For body copy, web UI labels, and modern-voice headlines. The trend across web design has been toward Sentence case for everything except brand-name logotypes.