As you write, you’ll no doubt end up at some stage with titles and headings. Chapter headings, report headings, articles, etc. can all cause you to stop and ask yourself, “Which words in this title should be capitalised?” Here’s a simplified set of rules that I hope will help.
Golden Rule
- Capitalise the first and last words—always. This “golden rule” trumps all others.
Capitalise
- All nouns and pronouns (this includes smaller words such as it and he).
- All verbs (including is and be).
- Adjectives and adverbs—all of them.
- That. (That can work as different parts of speech).
- Conjunctions that are four letters or more (such as with, since and because).
- Prepositions that are five letters or more (such as beside, toward and beneath).
- The first letter following a hyphen or a dash—although this is optional . . . it’s a question of style preference.
For example: Re-enter or Re-Enter: You could use either. However, I prefer to use another rule: Apply the standard rule to the word following the hyphen. In this example, as enter is a verb, it should be capitalised. If you applied the same rule to how-to, you would write it How-to, as to is a preposition of less than five letters.
Do Not Capitalise
- Conjunctions with fewer than four letters (such as and, but and or).
- Prepositions with fewer than five letters (such as on, of and over).
- Articles (such as the, a, and an).
- As and to.
- The first letter following a colon (unless it’s a proper noun). In some American Styles, capitalisation is acceptable where the colon introduces a complete sentence.
Remember
Sometimes the same word can act as different parts of speech. This may affect your decision on whether or not to capitalise it.
For example, in these two sentences below, the word up is first a preposition (which should not be capitalised as it’s a preposition with fewer than five letters) and then an adverb (which you should capitalise as all adverbs are capitalised).
- Running up the Mountain (preposition)
- Running Up to the Summit (adverb)
If you’re unsure of a word’s part in speech, try Google or a dictionary. If you’re still not sure, and if it looks strange to you in lowercase, then capitalise it.
Reference: The McGraw-Hill Desk Reference for Editors, Writers and Proofreaders.
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