A guide to capitalisation from Munch Studio Blog

Typography 101: A Quick Guide to Capitalisation in Headings


There isn’t a set rule for using title case versus sentence case in headings—it is a matter of personal preference. However, what’s important is to be consistent with how you style all your titles of your blog, book, printed publication or website pages.

If you’d like to learn the difference between title case, upper case, sentence case and lowercase—read on, this post is for you.

Title Case

Title case means that the first letter of each word is capitalised, except for certain small words, such as articles and short prepositions.

Uppercase

All letters in every word are capitalised. In body copy, uppercase is used for extreme emphasis. Netiquette generally discourages the use of all caps when posting messages online because it is seen as shouting and may be considered rude.

Sentence Case

In sentence case, only the first word has a capital letter. This is considered a more casual style and is commonly used in newspapers and on the web.

Lowercase

If using lowercase, all letters in all words are lowercase.



Style Manuals

There are some style manuals that writers can follow that set rules for capitalising titles.

Here are some links to some popular style guides:
The Associated Press Stylebook
Chicago Manual of Style
MLA style

If you decide to title case your headings, here’s a simple method you can use that follows the Gregg Reference Manual

1) Capitalize the first word of the title or heading.
2) Capitalize the last word of the title or heading.
3) All other words are capitalized unless they are conjunctions (and, or, but, nor, yet, so, for), articles (a, an, the), or prepositions (in, to, of, at, by, up, for, off, on).
4) Some prefer to also capitalise any word that has more than four letters.

Free Title Case Generator

Finally, below is a free handy tool you can bookmark and use when in a rush or in doubt: titlecase.com


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Munch Studio is a boutique design agency that specialises in corporate identity design, logo animation and other brand expressions.

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