What Is Title Case?
Title case capitalizes the first word, the last word and all major words of a title while articles, coordinating conjunctions and short prepositions stay lowercase — The Catcher in the Rye. MLA 9 uses it for works-cited titles; APA 7 restricts it to journal names, headings and titles named in text. This page unpacks the definition, the mistakes graders see most, and a worked example you can pattern-match against your own draft.
James Parker, MLS
Citation & Formatting Reviewer · Master of Library Science; 9 years as a reference librarian coaching APA, MLA and Chicago styles
Quick answer
Title case capitalizes the first word, the last word and all major words of a title while articles, coordinating conjunctions and short prepositions stay lowercase — The Catcher in the Rye. MLA 9 uses it for works-cited titles; APA 7 restricts it to journal names, headings and titles named in text.
On this page · 4 sections
The definition, precisely
Title case — Chicago calls its version headline style — follows one principle: stress words capitalize, function words do not. Always capitalize the first and last word of the title and subtitle, the first word after a colon, and both parts of most hyphenated compounds. Always lowercase the articles (a, an, the), the coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, for, so, yet) and the prepositions, regardless of length in most readings. Every noun, verb, adjective, adverb and pronoun capitalizes, even four-letter ones like With or Gold.
Where each style applies it is the part students miss. MLA 9 uses title case everywhere titles appear: your essay's title and every works-cited entry. APA 7 is split — journal names in the reference list take title case, reference titles for articles and books take sentence case, and levels 1 and 2 of your own headings take title case. Chicago applies headline style to titles of works named in text and to most headings. Knowing the split matters more than memorizing the lowercase list.
The grader's eye checks patterns, not dictionaries: a title in which Of, And or The sits capitalized mid-title reads as unedited. Two edge cases cover most confusion. Proper nouns keep their internal capitals regardless — English, MRI, the Midwest — and a word after a colon always capitalizes even when it would normally stay lowercase. When a style guide conflicts with your instructor's sheet, the sheet wins; graders grade against what they handed out, not against the manual. That is not instructor ego; it is the only way a stack of thirty papers gets marked consistently.
The four mistakes graders see most
Every one of these shows up in a stack of sixty papers — usually more than once. Each pairs the error with the fix, so the table doubles as a pre-submission check.
| Common mistake | The fix |
|---|---|
| Capitalizing prepositions in an MLA works-cited title. | The History of Rome keeps of lowercase. Articles, conjunctions and prepositions stay lowercase mid-title in every major style. |
| Leaving the last word lowercase. | First and last words always capitalize, whatever they are: What the Water Gave Me, not What the Water Gave me. |
| Using title case for APA 7 reference titles. | APA 7 sets article and book titles in the reference list in sentence case. Title case there belongs to journal names only. |
| Styling your own essay title differently from your works-cited entries. | Pick the style's pattern and apply it everywhere titles appear. Inconsistency inside one document is the most visible tell. |
A worked example
An MLA 9 works-cited entry for an article titled 'the future of remote learning after 2020' converts to title case: The Future of Remote Learning after 2020 — the, of, and after stay lowercase (after is a preposition here), while Future, Remote and Learning capitalize. The journal container name takes the same treatment: Computers and Composition. In the student's APA 7 version of the same paper, that article title flips to sentence case in the reference list, but the journal name keeps its capitals.
Pattern-match your own draft against this example rather than against the definition: concrete cases transfer better than abstract rules, and the example shows what the rule looks like when it is done right.
How title case differs from its neighbors
Title case is not sentence case, which capitalizes only the first word, the first word after a colon and proper nouns — APA 7's choice for reference titles. It is not all caps, which belongs to slide headers and email subjects, never to academic papers. And it is not headline-case-as-you-feel-it: the styles differ on short prepositions and hyphenated words, so copying the pattern of a published article in your field beats improvising from memory. Ten minutes with the style's own capitalization table settles more arguments than any intuition will.
Boundary confusion is where most grading deductions live: the term is understood roughly but applied against the wrong neighbor. Pin the boundary above and the term stops being fuzzy in practice, which is what the rubric is actually testing.
What's your next step?
Two taps to the exact page that unblocks this paper.
The 30-second check
Skim the four mistakes above against your draft. Any hit is a fix you can make in minutes — and the format row of the rubric is where they all live.
Questions with exact numbers
Forty-plus student questions — word counts, source math, citation edge cases — answered with the real arithmetic.
Browse the Q&ARelated term: Hanging Indent — the neighbor this term is most often confused with. Reading the pair together is how the boundary sticks.
Frequently asked questions
4 answered1Which words stay lowercase in title case?
Articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, for, so, yet) and prepositions stay lowercase mid-title. The first word, the last word, and the first word after a colon always capitalize no matter what they are. Proper nouns keep their capitals everywhere, even when they look like ordinary words.
2Does APA 7 use title case?
Yes, selectively: journal names in references, paper headings at levels 1 and 2, and titles of works you name in the text. Article and book titles inside the reference list itself are sentence case, which is the mix that trips students every semester.
3What happens with hyphenated words?
APA 7 capitalizes both parts of most hyphenated compounds: Follow-Up, Test-Retest. Chicago lowercases the second part when it is an article, preposition or conjunction. Match the style you are writing in and apply its pattern to every hyphenated title word.
4Should my own essay title use title case?
Yes in MLA and APA: your paper's title sits in title case (APA calls the heading style the same) on the first page. Keep it consistent with the headings and, in MLA, with every works-cited entry. A mixed-case title is the cheapest error on the page to avoid.
James Parker, MLS
Citation & Formatting Reviewer · Master of Library Science; 9 years as a reference librarian coaching APA, MLA and Chicago styles