Posted on by Jamie Ferguson

How-to: Title capitalization tools

It’s generally pretty easy to figure out which words to capitalize in a story title, but every once in a while there’s one word you’re not sure about, or else you’ve had one of those days where you keep making simple mistakes and you just want a sanity check. 🙂

Capitalization rules

There are a variety of approaches for capitalization of English titles here are some of the major ones.

  • Chicago Manual of Style
    General style guide.
  • APA style (American Psychological Association)
    Used for writing journal articles and academic books.
  • MLA style (Modern Language Association)
    Commonly used when writing papers and cite sources within the liberal arts and humanities.
  • AP style (Associated Press)
    Created for use by news organizations, but commonly used for all kinds of writing.
  • Wikipedia’s Manual of Style
    Used for Wikipedia articles.

What capitalization tools are available?

Here’s a list of some useful tools.

  • Capitalize My Title
    Suports APA, Chicago, AP, and MLA styles.
     

     
  • Headline Capitalization
    Suports APA, Chicago, AP, and MLA styles.
     

     
  • TitleCap
    Supports AP and Chicago styles.
    Allows you to force capitalization of any word five or more letters long.
     

     
  • Title Case Converter
    Support AP, Chicago, MLA, and Wikipedia styles.
    Allows you to to specify that words in all caps should be left alone, and if you check the “Show Explanations” box it will explain why a word was/wasn’t capitalized.
     

     

References

   
 

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