Punctuation for the Perplexed: Capitalization in Titles

Aug 1, 2010
Rebecca Coates

Titles - Alexandre Dulaunoy

Which words should you capitalize when writing a title? Learn all the tricky rules of headline style.

Titles of books, movies, and TV shows are conspicuously full of capital letters. But not every word of a title should be capitalized (no matter what iTunes may think). So how do you know which words get the capital treatment and which are business as usual? There are rules, but they can be wobbly, and even the respected Chicago Manual of Style admits they’re arbitrary. Still, most people can agree on a few rules for writing titles, or headline style:

1. Capitalize the first and last words.

2. Capitalize everything except

articles (the, a, an)
to and as
coordinate conjunctions (and, but, for, or, nor)
prepositions (to, from, on, out, of, at, with, into, up, across, after, beside, etc.)

Unfortunately, the preposition rule has a lot of exceptions. Some style guides simply pick a number of letters – say, three – and capitalize any preposition with more:

Truck-Stop Dining From Applesauce to Waffles

Others insist all prepositions should be lower case, though this can look strange with long ones like concerning.

Another problem with prepositions is their slipperiness: the same words can also be found playing adjectives, adverbs, and subordinate conjunctions, in which case they do need to be capitalized.

Canoeing up the Volga With Evgeni
But: Why You Should Never Look Up Old Friends on Facebook
The Day after Tomorrow
But: How to Move On After You’ve Had a Bad Perm

(Note that following the easy three-letter rule takes care of the second case for you – another reason to recommend it.)

3. When a hyphen combines two words into one (called a hyphenated compound), you should capitalize both words. Or you should only capitalize the first. It’s your choice: pick a rule! And, of course, be consistent.

If you choose not to capitalize the second part of compound words, be aware of a few exceptions. Obviously, words that would normally be capitalized should keep their capital letters, hyphen or no hyphen:

The Growth of Anti-Peruvianism in Post-Blair Britain

Also, compound words that start with prefixes too feeble to stand on their own (e.g., pre-, anti-) need two capital letters to be taken seriously:

My thesis is called “Anti-Establishmentarianism in Pre-Revolutionary France”.

4. Don’t tamper with foreign names. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s little de should stay lower-case no matter where it may find itself.

Finally, trust your instincts. If something looks weird, change it. Some expert, somewhere, will probably agree with you.

When to Use Headline Style

You’ve mastered headline style and you’re ready to wield it – but on what? Use it for the titles of books, movies, TV shows, web sites, magazines, articles, short stories, poems, plays, songs, paintings, and statues.

That week’s episode of Magnum, P.I. was called “No Such Thing as Too Hairy”.
Check out “Healing Your Cat With Crystals” in this month’s Feline Fanatic.
I read “Ode to a Nightingale” in John Keats: The Complete Poems, and it made my nose bleed.
The Burghers of Calais is Rodin’s heaviest sculpture.
My life is best illustrated by Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

Headings and sub-headings within a document are usually written in headline style, but regular sentence style is also acceptable. (You’ll notice we use headline style here at Suite101.)

Some people use headline style for the numbered parts of a book (e.g., Chapter 3, Appendix C), but sentence style (chapter 3, appendix C) is also correct. However, be aware that parts of a book when discussed generically are always lower case:

The introduction was all right, but I found the third chapter confusing and the index useless.

Finally, signs and notices are often written in headline style, unless they’re so long as to look awkward. The same applies to mottoes.

She flaunted her nonconformity by ignoring the No Smoking signs.
The sign in the boutique read “Any children left unattended will be given free kittens.”
She jokes that the state motto of Alabama is At Least We’re Not Mississippi.

For more on capital letters and when to use them, see Punctuation for the Perplexed: Capitalization.

Sources:

The Canadian Oxford Dictionary (Oxford University Press, 2001)

The Chicago Manual of Style (University of Chicago Press, 2005)

The Deluxe Transitive Vampire (Knopf, 1993)