Title Case Converter — APA, MLA, Chicago & AP Headline Capitalization
Capitalize titles and headlines correctly for APA, MLA, Chicago or AP style, and see all four side by side.
| APA 7 | A Walk Through the Woods: What We Learned From a Year Outside |
|---|---|
| MLA 9 | A Walk through the Woods: What We Learned from a Year Outside |
| Chicago | A Walk through the Woods: What We Learned from a Year Outside |
| AP | A Walk Through the Woods: What We Learned From a Year Outside |
| Capitalize every word | A Walk Through The Woods: What We Learned From A Year Outside |
| Sentence case | A walk through the woods: What we learned from a year outside |
Part of speech is not detected: a word like “up” or “over” is treated as a preposition. If it works as an adverb in your title (“Set Up”, “Take Over”), capitalize it yourself.
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This title case converter capitalizes a headline or title according to APA, MLA, Chicago or AP style. The four guides agree on the big picture, capitalize the important words and lowercase the small ones, but they disagree on what counts as small: APA and AP lowercase only short prepositions, so “Walk Through the Woods”, while Chicago and MLA lowercase every preposition, so “Walk through the Woods”. The tool applies each guide's own word list and shows all of them side by side so you can see the difference.
It also handles the cases people usually get wrong: the first word after a colon (always capitalized), hyphenated compounds (“Up-to-Date”, and Chicago's “Anti-inflammatory”), the last word (capitalized in MLA, Chicago and AP even when it is a preposition), and brand names with internal capitals, which are kept as typed. What it cannot do is read grammar. A word like “up” is treated as a preposition, so in a phrasal verb such as “Set Up Your Account”, where it is an adverb and every style capitalizes it, you need to fix it by hand.
How to use
- Type or paste a title. For several titles, put one per line.
- Choose the style guide your publication, school or journal uses: APA, MLA, Chicago or AP.
- Read the result and the comparison table, which shows the first title in every style.
- Check any word that could be an adverb rather than a preposition (up, over, out, off, down) and capitalize it if needed.
- Copy the result.
Frequently asked questions
What words are not capitalized in a title?
In every major style: articles (a, an, the), and coordinating conjunctions such as and, but, or and nor, unless they are the first word. Prepositions depend on the guide. APA and AP lowercase prepositions of three letters or fewer (of, in, on, to, for, by) and capitalize longer ones (With, Through, About). Chicago and MLA lowercase all prepositions regardless of length.
Is “with” capitalized in a title?
In APA and AP style, yes, because it has four letters: “Living With Diabetes”. In Chicago and MLA, no, because it is a preposition and those guides lowercase all prepositions: “Living with Diabetes”. The same applies to through, about, from, into, over and between.
Do you capitalize the word after a colon in a title?
Yes. APA, MLA, Chicago and AP all capitalize the first word of a subtitle, so “History: An Introduction”, not “History: an Introduction”. APA also capitalizes the first word after an em dash or end punctuation inside a title, and the converter does the same.
Does APA use title case or sentence case?
Both, in different places. APA 7 uses title case for the title of your paper, for section headings, and for titles of works mentioned in the text. It uses sentence case for titles of articles, books and web pages in the reference list. Use the Sentence case option here for reference entries, then capitalize proper nouns yourself.
Is “is” capitalized in a title?
Yes, in all four styles. “Is”, “are”, “be” and other verbs are major words no matter how short they are. The same goes for short pronouns (It, He, Me), short adverbs (Not, So in Chicago) and short nouns. Only articles, conjunctions and prepositions are minor words.
Does AP style use title case for headlines?
For news headlines, no. The AP Stylebook capitalizes only the first word and proper nouns in headlines, which is sentence case. AP's title case rules (capitalize words of four or more letters) are for composition titles: books, films, songs, TV shows and the like.
The four styles compared
• APA 7: capitalize words of four letters or more and every noun, verb, adjective, adverb and pronoun. Lowercase articles and conjunctions and prepositions of three letters or fewer. Capitalize the first word of the title and of any subtitle, and both parts of a hyphenated major word (Self-Report). APA does not require the last word to be capitalized.
• MLA 9: capitalize the first and last words and all principal words. Lowercase articles, all prepositions, coordinating conjunctions and the “to” in infinitives when they fall in the middle.
• Chicago: capitalize the first and last words and all major words. Lowercase articles, all prepositions, the conjunctions and, but, for, or and nor, and the words to and as. So and yet are capitalized. In hyphenated compounds the first part is always capitalized, and the second part is lowercased after a prefix such as anti-, pre- or non- (Anti-inflammatory).
• AP: capitalize principal words, including prepositions and conjunctions of four letters or more. Lowercase articles and conjunctions and prepositions of three letters or fewer, unless they are the first or last word. Used for composition titles, not headlines.
Worked example: one title, four results
Take “a walk through the woods with friends”. APA and AP both give “A Walk Through the Woods With Friends”, because through and with have four or more letters. Chicago and MLA both give “A Walk through the Woods with Friends”, because they lowercase prepositions of any length.
Now take “what are you looking at”. MLA, Chicago and AP capitalize the last word whatever it is, giving “What Are You Looking At”. APA has no last-word rule, so at stays lowercase. If your title ends in a preposition and you follow APA, read the rule your instructor or journal gives; many APA users capitalize it anyway.
What the converter cannot know
Style guides lowercase a preposition only when it works as a preposition. In “Turn Off the Lights” or “A Guide to Logging In”, off and in are adverbs (part of the verb), and every guide capitalizes them. Telling those apart needs a grammatical parse of the sentence; a word list cannot do it. The converter treats listed words as prepositions, which is right most of the time, and leaves the phrasal-verb cases to you.
Proper nouns are the other limit. Capitals already in your text are kept when they carry meaning (iPhone, NASA, eBay), but a name you typed in lowercase cannot be recognized. If the whole input is in capitals, the tool assumes the capitals carry no meaning and recases everything, so acronyms in an all-caps title need fixing afterwards.
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