Title Case Converter

How to capitalize a book title

In every major style the first word of a title and the first word of a subtitle get a capital, and so do nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and pronouns. The styles differ on the small words. Chicago and MLA generally lowercase articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions (and, but, for, nor, or, so, yet) and prepositions of any length, so the film is Gone with the Wind. APA and AP lowercase only those small words when they have three letters or fewer, so it is Gone With the Wind.

Chicago, MLA and AP capitalize the last word even when it is a small word: What Are You Looking At. APA does not force the last word: What Are You Looking at.

Colons, hyphens and names

The word after a colon starts with a capital: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. In a hyphenated word the first part gets a capital and so does each later part, unless it is a small word, so Run-of-the-Mill but Twenty-First. Words with capitals inside, such as iPhone, and acronyms such as NASA stay as you typed them.

The converter cannot know proper nouns. Sentence case lowercases everything after the first word, so capitalize names and places yourself afterwards.

Which style to use

Chicago is the usual choice for books and publishing, MLA for papers in the humanities and APA for papers in the social sciences. AP style applies to the titles of books, films and songs in news writing. When a publisher, a journal or an instructor names a style, follow theirs.