Title Case Converter
A free title case converter that applies APA, Chicago, MLA, and AP rules as you type. Paste any headline, blog post title, or email subject line into the box below, then toggle to lowercase, uppercase, or hyphenated output with one click.
What Is Title Case?
Title case capitalizes the first letter of every major word in a title and keeps short connecting words like "a", "an", "the", "and", "or", "but", and most prepositions lowercase. It is the standard style for book titles, blog post headlines, academic paper titles, news headlines, and most marketing copy.
Each style guide draws the line in a slightly different place. The four most common American guides are APA, Chicago, MLA, and AP. They mostly agree on nouns, verbs, and adjectives, but they split on prepositions, conjunctions, and the "to" in infinitives. The title case styles comparison walks through every difference with examples.
Common Capitalization Questions
For specific words, browse the per-word guides covering the most-searched cases: a, the, and, of, to, on, with, is, about, but, and our. You can also suggest a missing word through the contact form.
How to Use the Title Case Converter
Type or paste your title into the box above. The converter applies title case automatically as you type, with a one-click toggle to switch between Title Case, lower case, UPPER CASE, and hyphenated output.
Underneath the box, the tool counts your words and characters in real time, so you can check social post or email subject line length while you write. The output is ready to copy and paste straight into your blog editor, CMS, or email tool.
How Title Case Works
Title case is more nuanced than "capitalize every word". The rules cover which words count as major and which stay lowercase. Every guide capitalizes the first and last words of the title, plus every noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, and adverb in between. The differences come down to how each guide treats articles, conjunctions, and prepositions.
The Basics
Capitalize the first and last word of the title regardless of part of speech. Capitalize every noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, and adverb. Capitalize subordinating conjunctions like "because", "since", and "than". Capitalize the first word after a colon or dash (most guides treat the subtitle as a fresh start).
Common Exceptions
Articles ("a", "an", "the"), coordinating conjunctions ("and", "but", "for", "or", "nor", "so", "yet"), and short prepositions ("at", "by", "in", "of", "on", "to", "up") stay lowercase unless they are the first or last word. APA, AP, and AMA add a 4-letter rule that capitalizes any preposition with four or more letters, so "with", "from", "into", "about", and "after" get capitalized under those guides.
Style Guide Variations
APA capitalizes every word of four or more letters and lowercases shorter articles, conjunctions, and prepositions. Chicago and MLA lowercase prepositions regardless of length, treating them as grammatical glue rather than principal words. AP and AMA follow the 4-letter rule like APA. The New York Times capitalizes prepositions of four or more letters but lowercases short ones like "on" and "to" as prepositions, while capitalizing them as adverbs. Bluebook (legal writing) uses a 5-letter cutoff. The full breakdown lives in the title case styles comparison.
