Title case vs sentence case: when to use each

The difference is how many words get a capital letter. Title case capitalizes the first word, the last word and every “major” word in between (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns and longer words), and leaves short articles, conjunctions and prepositions lowercase. Sentence case capitalizes only what a normal sentence would: the first word and proper nouns. Neither is “correct” in general. The right one depends on what you are writing and which style guide your school, publisher or company follows, and the one rule every guide shares is to be consistent.

The two styles side by side

	Title case	Sentence case
Capitalized	First and last word, all major words	First word and proper nouns
Lowercase	Articles, short conjunctions, short prepositions	Everything else
Example	What Is It For: A Guide to Self-Report Surveys	What is it for: a guide to self-report surveys
Also called	Headline style, title style	Sentence style
Typical use	Titles of books, articles and papers; formal headings	Web and app headings, UI labels, reference-list titles

The title case example above follows APA. Title case is the style with more rules, because the guides disagree about which small words stay lowercase. Sentence case is nearly the same everywhere. The main thing guides differ on is whether to capitalize the first word after a colon.

What each style guide says

The table summarizes what the guides themselves say, as of October 2026. Most of them use both styles, each for a different job.

Guide	Title case for	Sentence case for
APA 7th edition	The paper title on the title page	Titles of articles and books in the reference list
MLA	Titles of English-language works	Titles of works in other languages
Microsoft Writing Style Guide	Product names, book and song titles, article titles in citations, white papers, job titles	Almost everything else: titles, headings, blog posts, UI labels
Google developer documentation	(not used for headings)	Document titles, headings, list items, table cells
Wikipedia	Titles of works, written as they are usually published	Article titles, section headings, table headers, captions

Some details worth knowing:

• APA asks for the paper title in title case: capitalize the first word, the first word of any subtitle, all major words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns and every word of four letters or more) and the second part of hyphenated major words such as “Self-Report”. It lowercases articles and conjunctions and prepositions of three letters or fewer. Short verbs such as “is” and “be” are still capitalized. In the reference list, the titles of articles and books switch to sentence case, with a capital on the first word after a colon.
• MLA uses “headline style”, capitalizing every word except prepositions and the common coordinating conjunctions. For titles in languages other than English, MLA uses sentence style, because languages capitalize differently. German, for example, capitalizes every noun.
• Chicago gives rules for capitalizing titles that are mentioned or cited in text, notes and bibliographies, and its Q&A notes that designers have more freedom on covers and title pages.
• Microsoft uses sentence style for its own content. When title style is needed, it capitalizes the first and last words, lowercases a, an and the, lowercases prepositions of four letters or fewer and the conjunctions and, but, or, nor, yet and so, and capitalizes everything else, including is and this.
• Wikipedia gives this pair as an example: “Economic and demographic shifts after World War II”, not “Economic and Demographic Shifts After World War II”.

For the exact list of lowercase words in AP, APA, Chicago and MLA, see title case rules by style guide.

How to choose for your own writing

If a school, journal, publisher or client gives you a style guide, follow it. That settles the question. If nobody does, these choices are common and easy to defend:

• Academic papers. Use the style guide your course or journal requires. In APA, that means title case for the paper title and sentence case for titles in the reference list.
• Blog posts, help articles and website headings. Sentence case is the house style of Microsoft, Google’s developer documentation and Wikipedia. It is quicker to write and leaves fewer decisions to argue about. If you prefer title case for post titles, decide whether subheadings use it too, and apply the same choice on every page.
• Buttons, menus and form labels. Use sentence case (“Save changes”, “Add to cart”) unless your platform’s design guidelines say otherwise.
• Titles of books, films, songs and reports you mention. Use title case, or the capitalization the work itself uses. Product and brand names keep their official spelling in either style: iPhone, YouTube, eBay.
• Slides, newsletters and email subject lines. No standard governs these, so pick one style and use it everywhere. Sentence case reads more like a normal message.

The practical test is consistency. A page with one heading in title case and the next in sentence case looks unedited, whichever style you meant to use.

The same headings in both styles

These conversions come from the site’s own tools: title case with the APA and Chicago settings, and sentence case.

Input	Title case (APA)	Title case (Chicago)	Sentence case
a room with a view	A Room With a View	A Room with a View	A room with a view
why we switched from slack to email	Why We Switched From Slack to Email	Why We Switched from Slack to Email	Why we switched from slack to email
how to write a book in 30 days	How to Write a Book in 30 Days	How to Write a Book in 30 Days	How to write a book in 30 days
the NASA guide to the iPhone of rockets	The NASA Guide to the iPhone of Rockets	The NASA Guide to the iPhone of Rockets	The NASA guide to the iPhone of rockets

Two things stand out. First, APA capitalizes “With” and “From” because they have four letters, while the Chicago setting lowercases them. Second, the sentence-case version of the Slack heading is wrong as it stands. “Slack” is a product name and needs its capital, and no converter can know that from a lowercase input. Always reread proper nouns after converting.

Converting text with the tools

1. Paste your headings into the title case converter, one per line. Each line is treated as a separate title.
2. Choose a Style guide: AP (news), APA 7th (academic), Chicago 18th (books), MLA 9th (humanities) or Capitalize every word. The table under the result shows your first title in all four styles, so you can compare them.
3. For sentence case, use the sentence case converter. It capitalizes the first letter of each sentence and of each new paragraph, and lowercases everything else except the pronoun “I”. If you paste one heading per line, check Start a new sentence on every line (lists, headings); it is off by default, and without it only the first line gets a capital.
4. Leave Keep acronyms and brand names (NASA, iPhone) checked so that words with unusual capitals are kept as written. This works only when the text contains lowercase letters. In all-caps text every word looks like an acronym, so all of them are converted.
5. To switch between several styles quickly (UPPERCASE, lowercase, Capitalized Case, Title Case (APA), camelCase and more), use the case converter.

Know what the tools cannot do. They follow word lists, not grammar:

• Proper nouns in sentence case. “Mr. Smith goes to Washington. it rained.” becomes “Mr. smith goes to washington. It rained.” Names typed with a normal capital look like ordinary words, so put the capitals back by hand.
• The word after a colon. The sentence case converter treats a colon as part of the sentence, so “Block Party: Communities Use Minecraft To Create Public Spaces” becomes “Block party: communities use minecraft to create public spaces”. In headings, Microsoft, Google and APA would capitalize “Communities”, and “Minecraft” is a product name. The title case converter does capitalize the word after a colon.
• Phrasal verbs. In “How to Set up Your iPhone” the tool lowercases “up” because it is on the preposition list, but in “set up” it is part of the verb. Most title case guides would write “Set Up”.
• Roman numerals. In the AP, APA, Chicago and MLA styles, the title case converter writes Roman numerals from II to XXXIX in capitals (except XI, which is also the name Xi), so “world war ii” becomes “World War II”. The Capitalize every word option does not yet do this (“world war ii” becomes “World War Ii”), and the sentence case converter leaves them lowercase, so type numerals in capitals (“World War II”) and they are kept.

Common mistakes

• Capitalizing every word. “How To Write A Book In 30 Days” is not title case in APA, MLA or Microsoft style. All three lowercase articles such as “a” in the middle of a title. The “Capitalize every word” option exists for labels and lists that need it, not for titles that follow a style guide.
• Lowercasing short verbs. “Is”, “Be” and “Are” are verbs, so title case capitalizes them even though they are short: “This Is All There Is”.
• Mixing styles at the same level. Choose one style for H2 headings and one for H3 headings, and keep them across the site.
• Writing whole headings in capitals. All caps is a visual effect, not a case style. Microsoft’s guide advises against using it for emphasis. If you need it, apply it with CSS (text-transform: uppercase) and keep the source text in sentence or title case, so you can change the design later.
• Forgetting the URL. The capitalization of a heading does not carry over to its address. A text to slug converter turns either style into the same lowercase slug. For code-style names such as camelCase and snake_case, see camelCase vs snake_case vs kebab-case.