headlinecase

Headline case, also known as title case or headline capitalization, is a style for capitalizing words in titles, headlines, and headings. It contrasts with sentence case, where only the first word and proper nouns are capitalized. Headline case aims to make titles visually prominent and to signal their importance.

In most headline-case systems, major words are capitalized while certain short words are not. Articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, for, yet, so), and most prepositions are typically lowercased unless they are the first or last word of the title. Longer or more significant prepositions may be capitalized in some guides. The exact rules vary by style guide, which can lead to subtle differences between publications.

Common style guides differ in detail. The Chicago Manual of Style generally capitalizes more words and lowers short prepositions, while the Associated Press style often favors capitalizing major words but keeps short conjunctions and prepositions in lowercase, with the first and last words always capitalized. Other guides such as MLA or APA have their own variations, especially regarding hyphenated terms and proper nouns.

Usage and tools. Headline case is widely used in newspapers, magazines, books, websites, and metadata. Many word processors and programming libraries provide functions or filters named headlinecase or titlecase to convert text programmatically, though results may vary with hyphenation and tricky phrases. See also title case, sentence case, and typography guidelines.