Pealkiri

Pealkiri is an Estonian noun meaning “title” or “heading.” It denotes the name by which a work or a part of a text is identified, such as the name of a book, article, film, song, or a section within a document. The term is widely used in everyday language as well as in bibliographic and metadata contexts.

In libraries, publishing, and digital media, pealkiri is a standard field label used to identify a work. When people discuss a publication, the pealkiri helps distinguish it from the content, description, or author. The concept also appears in editorial practice, where the pealkiri marks the beginning of a work or its formal designation.

Typography and style considerations accompany the use of pealkiri. Titles are typically set apart from body text, with longer works often rendered in italics and shorter works sometimes placed in quotation marks, depending on the style guide. In Estonian practice, capitalization for titles generally follows sentence-style rules: only the first word and any proper nouns are capitalized, while other words remain in lower case.

Grammatically, pealkiri behaves as a standard Estonian noun and declines according to normal noun-inflection patterns to reflect case and number in sentences. The term is widely understood across Estonian-language contexts, including literature, journalism, education, and digital catalogs.