Capitalize Titaly

Title Capitalization Tool

Paste a title or a whole list of headings, pick a style guide, and get the correct capitals at once — APA, Chicago, AP, MLA, Bluebook, AMA, New York Times, Wikipedia and email subject style. Free, with nothing uploaded.

Free · No signup · Whatever you type stays in your browser

  1. 1Pick the style guide your college, publisher or office follows — the tabs are right below.
  2. 2Type or paste your title. Paste many lines at once if you have a whole list.
  3. 3Press Copy result. Or use the grey buttons for sentence case, UPPERCASE and the rest.

Step 1 — choose a style guide

Step 3 — choose what to do

Quotes:
Step 4 — copy your resultAPA style (7th edition)
Your corrected title will appear here.
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Reading time
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APA style (7th edition)

Psychology, education, nursing and most social science journals.

Capital letters for the first word, the last word and all important words. Small letters for "a", "an", "the", joining words, and prepositions of three letters or fewer.

  • Capitalize the first and last word of the title, and of the subtitle too.
  • Capitalize every word of four letters or more, including "With" and "From".
  • Keep "a", "an", "the", "and", "but", "or", "for", "nor" small, plus prepositions of three letters or fewer.
  • Capitalize both halves of a joined word ("Self-Report", "Long-Term").
  • Capitalize the first word after a colon or a dash.

Custom dictionary

Words that must always look a certain way, whatever the style guide says. Separate them with commas. They are saved in this browser only.

How to capitalize a title correctly

Every title case rule comes down to one question: which words are important enough to get a capital letter? All eight title case guides on this page agree on the main part. The first word, the last word and every important word — nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs — get a capital. They only disagree about the small words in between.

APA, AP and AMA count letters. Any word of four letters or more gets a capital, whatever type of word it is. So you get Between, Through and With.

Chicago and MLA look at the type of word. Every preposition stays small, however long it is. So the same title gives you between, through and with.

Bluebook and Wikipedia are in the middle. They keep words of four letters or fewer small. The New York Times does not use a rule at all — it uses a fixed list of small words.

The rules everyone agrees on

  • Always capitalize the first word, even if it is "a" or "the".
  • Always capitalize the first word after a colon. This is where most mistakes happen.
  • Capitalize all nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, however short. "Is" and "Be" are verbs.
  • Never use capitals just to make a word look important. Use italics instead.
  • Leave short forms as they are. NASA, HTML and PDF do not become Nasa, Html and Pdf.

The other buttons, and when to use them

Sentence case capitalizes only the first word and names. Use it for headings inside a page, buttons, form labels and email subject lines.

Proper case capitalizes the first letter of every word and makes the rest small. This is what you want for names and addresses exported from a database.

First letter does the same but does not touch the other letters, so iPhone stays iPhone. And alternating and toggle case are mostly for jokes and memes, which is a perfectly good use of a free tool.

Fixing a full document

Paste as many lines as you want. Each line is handled on its own, so a list of forty headings comes back matching in one go. This is the fastest way to do the consistency check we explain in our self-editing checklist. It catches the mix of title case and sentence case that slowly creeps into any document written over a few weeks.

Which guide do Indian schools and colleges use?

Most Indian universities follow APA or MLA, and many management and commerce courses use APA. Science and medical journals usually ask for AMA or their own house style. Always check your department handbook first, because the guide named there is the one your marks depend on. If your workplace has no rule at all, use AP — it is the easiest to read and the hardest to get wrong.

Frequently asked questions

How do I capitalize my title correctly?

Paste the title into the box above, pick the style guide your publisher, teacher or company follows, and copy the result. The tool capitalizes the first and last word and every major word, keeps the small words small, and handles colons, hyphens and short verbs the way that guide expects. If you have a list of headings, paste them all at once; each line is treated as its own title.

What is title case?

In title case, the first word, the last word and all the important words of a title start with a capital letter. Small words like "a", "the", "and" and short prepositions stay in small letters. Which words count as small depends on the style guide you follow.

Which style guide should I use?

Use APA for psychology, education and social sciences. Use Chicago for books. Use AP for news, PR and marketing. Use MLA for literature and school or college essays. Use AMA for medical writing and Bluebook for legal work. If nobody has told you which one to use, and it is not academic work, choose AP. It is the safest.

Why do APA and Chicago give different answers?

APA capitalizes any word of four letters or more, so you get "Between". Chicago keeps every preposition small, however long it is, so you get "between". APA counts letters. Chicago looks at the type of word. That one difference explains most of the results you see.

Do you capitalize the word after a colon?

Yes. Every major style guide capitalizes the first word after a colon, even a small word. "Editing: A Field Guide" is correct. "Editing: a Field Guide" is not. This is the mistake people make most often.

Is my text sent to your server?

No. All the work happens in your browser. Nothing you paste is sent, saved or stored anywhere. Once the page has loaded, the tool even keeps working without internet.

Is there any word or character limit?

No. Paste one headline or a full document. Each line is handled separately, so you can fix fifty headings together in one go.

Does it handle short forms and brand names?

Yes. Words already in capitals, like NASA and HTML, stay that way. Brand names with capitals inside them, like iPhone, eBay and YouTube, also stay correct. You can add your own words in the custom dictionary below the tool.

What is the difference between title case and sentence case?

Title case capitalizes all the important words: "How to Write a Good Report". Sentence case capitalizes only the first word and names: "How to write a good report". Use title case for titles of published work, and sentence case for headings inside a page, buttons and email subject lines.

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