Free Title Case Converter
Why does title case have so many rules?
Because there is no single authority. Newspapers, universities, publishers and style manuals each made their own decisions about which short words to capitalise, and the differences stuck. The result is that a headline can be correct under one guide and wrong under another. This converter applies the rules of four common approaches, AP, APA, Chicago or MLA, and capitalise every word, so you can follow the guide your publication, school or client actually uses.
One headline, four answers
Take the lowercase headline a guide to the best tools for working from home.
- Chicago and MLA: A Guide to the Best Tools for Working from Home
- AP: A Guide to the Best Tools for Working From Home
- APA: A Guide to the Best Tools for Working From Home
- Every word: A Guide To The Best Tools For Working From Home
The only difference between the first and the next two is the word from. Chicago and MLA keep prepositions lowercase whatever their length, while AP and APA capitalise words of four letters or more. That one small word is why people argue about title case.
The common ground
- The first and last words are always capitalised.
- Nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are capitalised, including short verbs such as is and are.
- Articles such as a, an and the stay lowercase unless they open the title.
- Short conjunctions such as and, but and or stay lowercase.
- Short prepositions such as in, on, at and to usually stay lowercase.
Hyphens, colons and acronyms
Edge cases are where mistakes creep in. After a colon, most guides capitalise the first word of the second part: Planning a Trip: Where to Start. In hyphenated compounds, practice varies, but the first element is normally capitalised and later ones depend on the guide. Acronyms such as SEO, NASA and PDF should stay in capitals, and the Keep ALL-CAPS words option protects them from being turned into Seo or Pdf. Brand names with unusual capitalisation, such as iPhone, need checking by hand after conversion.
Title case or sentence case?
There is also a modern habit of using sentence case for headings, where only the first word and proper names are capitalised. It reads more naturally, saves you the rules and is common in apps and many newsrooms. Neither style is better. What matters is consistency across your whole site. If your blog uses title case, every post should. Mixing styles is the thing readers notice. To switch text between sentence case and other formats, the case converter is the right tool.
Does it matter for SEO?
Not in any measurable way. Search engines do not rank a title higher because of its capital letters. Capitalisation only affects how the title looks to people in search results, where title case can look slightly more formal and sentence case slightly friendlier. Choose what fits your brand, check how it looks in the SERP preview tool, and spend your effort on wording the title well.
Writing the headline itself
Capitalisation is the last step. A good headline is specific, honest and promises one thing the page delivers. Numbers and clear outcomes tend to work: 7 Ways to Cut Your PDF Size beats PDF Tips. Put the important words at the start, where readers and search results show them, and keep the length within about sixty characters so it is not cut. Write three versions, pick the clearest, and only then run it through the converter. The AI blog title and outline generator can suggest alternatives when you are stuck.
Headlines in other languages
Title case is an English convention. Bengali and many other scripts have no capital letters at all, and languages such as French, Spanish and Italian normally capitalise only the first word and proper names in a title. If you write for a multilingual audience, follow the habit of each language, and use this tool only for English headlines.
Check the result before you publish
Automated rules are a very good first pass but they cannot read your mind. Names, product terms and words that are verbs in one context and prepositions in another can still need a manual fix. Give the converted headline one quick read, and for new pages create the address with the slug generator, so the visible title and the URL stay in step.
FAQ
It is a capitalisation style where the main words of a title start with a capital letter and short minor words usually stay lowercase.
Follow the style guide your publication or school uses. For a website, any style is fine as long as it is consistent.
Yes. They are verbs, and verbs are capitalised in all major styles even though they are short.
Not when Keep ALL-CAPS words is ticked.
No. Conversion happens in your browser.