Title Case Capitalization
Title case capitalizes the opening word of a title plus every word that carries real weight — nouns, verbs, adjectives, and the like. Small connector words (in, on, at), conjunctions (and, but, or), and articles (a, an, the) stay lowercase unless one of them happens to open the title. Drop your text into the box above and the title-cased version shows up instantly, ready to copy or download for headlines, blog titles, email subject lines, or anywhere else that calls for consistent title formatting.
What exactly is title case?
Title case is a convention for capitalizing headings and titles. The bulk of the words get a capital letter, but a small set of short function words — articles (a, an, the), prepositions (in, on, at, to, by, for, of, up, from, as), and conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, so, yet, if) — stay lowercase unless one of them is the very first word.
Take "a trip through the mountains" — in title case that becomes "A Trip Through the Mountains." "the" stays lowercase because it's a minor word buried in the middle, but the opening "A" gets capitalized simply because it starts the title.
What are the actual rules?
The first word of a title is always capitalized, along with every other major word. Short prepositions, conjunctions, and articles are the exception — they stay lowercase unless they land at the very start. Different style guides (AP, APA, Chicago, MLA) each tweak the details slightly, but they're all working toward the same goal: make the important words stand out so the title reads clearly at a glance.
Which words stay lowercase in title case?
Across most style guides, that's short prepositions (in, on, at, to, by, for, of, up, from, as), conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, so, yet, if), and articles (a, an, the) — unless one of them opens the title. Hyphenated compound words are handled differently depending on the guide: some only capitalize the first half, others capitalize both. As a rough rule of thumb, capitalize the first and last word no matter what, plus anything four letters or longer.
How does this converter actually work?
Paste or type your text into the box above, and the title-cased version renders on the spot — no button to click. From there you can copy it to your clipboard or download it as a text file.
Convert Your File Names to Title Case Instantly.
Does it recognize proper nouns and abbreviations?
It does — there's a built-in list of frequently used proper nouns and abbreviations that gets applied after the standard title-case rules run. That's what keeps terms like NASA, iPhone, JavaScript, PostgreSQL, or place names like New York and Los Angeles from getting flattened into something like "Nasa" or "Html."
That list has its limits, though — rarer names or niche terminology might not be covered. Anything outside the list just falls back to the standard title-case rules.
Should I use title case or sentence case?
Title case capitalizes most of the words in a heading, which gives it a more formal, traditional feel. Sentence case only capitalizes the opening word and proper nouns, landing somewhere more conversational and modern. You'll find title case as the default in published books, newspapers, and academic writing, while sentence case tends to show up in blog posts, product interfaces, and brands going for a friendlier voice. Pick whichever matches your audience and stick with it. If you're naming things in code instead of writing prose, check out our camelCase, PascalCase, snake_case, and kebab-case converters.
Last reviewed: August 2026