What should be capitalized in a title apa

For additional capitalization rules, see APA 7, Sections 6.13-6.21. 

Words Beginning a Sentence

• The floor caved in.
• No one responded to the final question of the test.

Major Words in Titles Used in the Body of the Paper

• In the book Modern Warfare, Clinger (1998) envisioned a world where ground troops are unnecessary.

This includes all words with four or more letters, all linking verbs, and the first word of a subtitle after the colon.

Major Words in All Headings (Levels 1-5)

• See our webpage on headings and APA 7, Section 2.27 for more information.

Proper Nouns

• Few psychologists were more influential than Freud.

Racial and ethnic group names are proper nouns and therefore require capitalization. This rule is a new clarification in APA 7.

• I interviewed Latina women between the ages of 25 and 39.

Trade Names

• My dog loves Purina Puppy Chow.

Names of Specific University Departments or Courses

• I enrolled in Scholarly Writing 101.
• Glassner was the associate dean of the Department of Psychology, Iowa State University.

Nouns Followed by Numerals

• On Day 2, the rats became more aggressive.
• I visited my grandmother on Floor 3.

Exact Titles of Tests

• The students needed to take the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test.

Do Not Capitalize

Job Titles and Positions

• I interviewed the chief executive officers of a dozen technology companies.

Only capitalize a job title or position when it precedes the name of the job holder.

• I interviewed Chief Executive Officer Jennifer Owusu.

Proper Adjectives as Defined by Webster's Collegiate Dictionary

• Because her baby was already 14 lbs, her doctor insisted that she have a cesarean section.

Generic References to Courses or Departments

• I failed my psychology course.

Names of Laws, Theories, Models, Hypotheses, Effects, Diseases, Disorders, Therapies, or Variables

• The student was unfamiliar with Gardner's multiple intelligence model.
• Floyd and Rivers (2003) were influenced by the hierarchy of needs.
• Forty percent of participants have diabetes.

The Words "Page" and "Paragraph" Before a Numeral

• My teacher told me to reread page 5 of the textbook.

This guideline follows common usage and differs from the general rule to capitalize nouns that precede a numeral.

Generic titles of tests:

• The students needed to take the vocabulary test.

Capitalization Video

• APA Formatting & Style: Capitalization (video transcript)

Related Resources

Knowledge Check: Capitalization

What Is Title Case?

Title case is a style that is traditionally used for the titles of books, movies, songs, plays, and other works. In title case, all major words are capitalized, while minor words are lowercased. A simple example would be Lord of the Flies. Title case is often used for headlines as well, for example, in newspapers, essays, and blogs, and is therefore also known as headline style.

The capitalization rules are explained in more detail in the next section, but essentially title case means to capitalize every word except articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions (and, or, but, …), and (short) prepositions (in, on, for, up, …). This is trickier than it seems because many words can be used in different grammatical functions. For example, in Lay It All on Me, “on” is a preposition and must be lowercased, but it is used as an adjective in It’s On Again and as an adverb in I Could Go On Singing, so it must be capitalized in both cases. Here are some more examples:

• in: The Catcher in the Rye, but Give In to Me (adverb)
• out: Fresh out the Oven, but School’s Out Forever (adjective)
• up: Crawling up a Hill, but Picking Up the Pieces (adverb)
• but: Nothing but the Truth, but Life Is But a Dream (adverb)
• a: Let’s Make a Deal, but The A to Z of TV Gardening (noun)
• by: Stand by Me, but Stand By for Action (adverb)

These examples show that the approach to always lowercase in, on, by, etc., is inadequate and often leads to wrong results. This title capitalization tool, therefore, uses more sophisticated methods to capitalize your titles and takes the context of each word into account. This produces highly accurate results, and all the examples mentioned above are handled correctly.

Title Capitalization Rules

Title case is not a universal standard. Instead, there are a number of style guides—for example, the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) and the MLA Handbook—which each have individual rules for the capitalization of titles. However, there is a consensus about the basic rules:

1. Always capitalize the first word of a title
2. Capitalize the following parts of speech:
   • nouns
   • pronouns (including it, my, and our )
   • verbs (including is, am, and other forms of to be )
   • adverbs
   • adjectives
   • some conjunctions (style-dependent)
   • long prepositions (style-dependent)
3. Lowercase the following parts of speech:
   • articles
   • some conjunctions (style-dependent)
   • short prepositions (style-dependent)

The main differences between the styles are:

• prepositions: According to the AMA manual, the APA manual, and the AP guidelines on composition titles, only prepositions up to three letters are lowercased (in, on, off, out, …). Bluebook and Wikipedia lowercase prepositions up to four letters (from, with, over, like, …). CMOS and MLA lowercase all prepositions, regardless of their length. The New York Times applies special rules: only selected prepositions with two or three letters are lowercased (at, by, in, for, …), while other prepositions of the same length are capitalized (up, off, out, …), as well as all prepositions with more than three letters.
• coordinating conjunctions: AMA, AP, APA, MLA, Bluebook, and Wikipedia lowercase all seven: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so (which can be remembered by the mnemonic FANBOYS). CMOS lowercases for, and, nor, but, or, but not yet and so. The New York Times lowercases for, and, but, or, and capitalizes nor, yet, so.
• subordinating conjunctions: AP, APA, and the New York Times lowercase the subordinating conjunctions as and if (Do as I Do, What if We’re Wrong?). CMOS lowercases as but capitalizes if. AMA, Bluebook, MLA, and Wikipedia capitalize both as and if.
• last word: AP, CMOS, MLA, the New York Times, and Wikipedia have a rule to always capitalize the last word of a title. AMA, APA, and Bluebook do not have such a rule, which means a preposition at the end of a title is lowercased in these styles (Be Careful What You Wish for).

There are further differences between the various capitalization styles, for example regarding hyphenated compounds. Details and a comparison table can be found on the separate Title Case Rules page.

What Is Sentence Case?

In sentence case style, only the first word of a sentence or title and any proper nouns are capitalized. All other words are lowercase. These rules are simple enough and easy to follow – for a human. For a computer, however, this is a very difficult task. First of all, there are countless proper nouns (just think of family names). Secondly, many words are only sometimes a proper noun, or part of one. For example, “new” is normally lowercase, but it must be capitalized when it’s part of a proper noun like “New York” or “Green New Deal.”

This sentence case converter supports proper nouns, but because of the complexity of this task, it is not possible to attain the same level of accuracy as in the title case conversion. Still, the results are very good and require only minimal manual corrections.

The converter on this page is intended for titles and headlines. You can use multi-line mode to convert a batch of headlines at once, or single-line mode to convert a single headline to sentence case and one or more title case styles in parallel so that you can assess which style you like best. To convert longer texts, visit the dedicated Sentence Case Converter page.

Using the Converter

You can enter text either by typing or by pasting it from the clipboard. If the option “Convert When Text Is Pasted” is checked, then pasting text automatically triggers the conversion. Otherwise, press “Enter” to start the conversion (only in single-line mode), or press Ctrl+Enter (on a PC) or Cmd+Enter (on a Mac), or click the “Convert” button. After the conversion, you can copy the results to the clipboard by clicking the “Copy” or “Copy All” button, or by pressing Ctrl+C (this works without marking the text beforehand!).

The converter provides explanations for why each word was capitalized or lowercased. They can be seen by hovering over the words of the converted title, or by switching on the “Show Explanations” option. If a word has a dotted red line under it, the converter is not sufficiently sure of its capitalization. The explanation text will then provide information to help you decide which alternative is the right one. An example title to try this out with is The Monsters Came by Night.

Options

There are several options available. Only the first two have an influence on the result of the conversion:

Keep Words in All Caps: This option only affects the title case conversion. If it is checked, then entered words in all caps will not be changed. For example, the input FREE consultation would be converted to FREE Consultation. If the option is unchecked, the result would be Free Consultation. The converter also recognizes various common acronyms and always converts them to all caps. For example, the inputs usa, uSa, and USA would all result in the output USA, even if “Keep Words in All Caps” is not checked. Unavoidably, acronyms that cannot be distinguished from regular words are exempt from this special handling (e.g., IT/it or US/us).

Use Straight Quotes: If this option is not checked, all quotation marks in the titles will be converted to curly quotes, also known as “smart” quotes or typographer’s quotes. Check this option if you prefer straight quotes, also known as "dumb" quotes or typewriter quotes.

Enable Multi-Line Input: Use this option to switch between single-line and multi-line mode. In single-line mode, only one title can be converted at a time, but in multiple styles, if desired. Multi-line mode, on the other hand, allows converting up to 30 titles at a time, but only in one style.

Show Explanations: If checked, explanations are shown for why each word was capitalized or lowercased. This only applies to the title case conversion.

Highlight Changes: If this option is checked, then all letters whose capitalization has changed are marked in orange.

Convert When Text Is Pasted: If checked, pasting text triggers the conversion. Clearing the text box before pasting is not necessary since the existing text will be overwritten.

Typography

In addition to converting to title case, the converter also performs small typographic corrections. For example, straight quotes are changed to curly quotes, hyphens are changed to dashes where appropriate, three consecutive dots are converted to an ellipsis, and spaces are removed before question marks, exclamation marks, commas, etc. For example, "I like rock 'n' roll !" becomes “I Like Rock ’n’ Roll!”

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