Comments on: Title Capitalization in the English Language

By: Joon-Seo Park

Joon-Seo Park — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 15:09:25 +0000

I was also curious about what words should be capitalized in titles.
I was searching allmusic.com and found out that “But” is not written in lowercase letters even though it is in the middle of the title.
allmusic.com is a site which follows the rule of title capitalization… but “But” is capitalized…
example..
“No One Knows But You”
“No One to Blame But Yourself”
“Down But Not Yet Out”
even “Yet” is not capitailized
I’m confused… Is there another specific rule for this?

You can see that other titles like
“King of Wishful Thinking”
“Knock on Wood”
“Love It or Leave It Alone/Welcome to Jamrock”
are following the rule correctly..

By: Donna

Donna — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:50:53 +0000

I think ” since” is capitalized in titles. I think.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:09:14 +0000

GREAT list! I am a native English speaker, and I found this site useful for my current college paper. I was not sure if I should capitalize “sans” in my title. Now, I know that I should not do so. Thank you very much!

By: MoneyOnline

MoneyOnline — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:28:26 +0000

Thanks for those tips, I am going to print these up because I am constantly running into words that I’m not sure I should capitalize.

By: MoneyOnline

MoneyOnline — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:27:41 +0000

Thanks for those tips, I am going to print these up because I am constantly running into words that I’m not sure I should capitalize.

By: Name

Name — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:09:10 +0000

Words like “underneath” should be capitalized as they are greater than four letters in length. So even if it is a preposition, it still may be capitalized.

By: François

François — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:41:42 +0000

Your post is extremely useful! It completely changed the way I entitle my Mp3 songs! :)

Thanks!

By: mona

mona — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:09:25 +0000

It’s a great post for native speakers as well!!!

By: Cody

Cody — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 05:43:13 +0000

Would you capitalize “which”?

By: Nunajer Bidnis

Nunajer Bidnis — Mon, 21 May 2007 14:19:02 +0000

I compiled it by looking-up (internet) the parts of speech included on your list, example: using google, “define: adposition” = “It is called a preposition if placed before a noun, and is called a postposition if placed after a noun.” So prepositions. I also looked-up the articles and conjunctions…and compared the various lists I discovered with each other; their matching-up was pretty cut & dry. This then gave me a list by parts-of-speech…which is what I posted.

On this list, however, there are some overlapping words…words that can be used both as a preposition and as a conjunction; thus, form my self I threw-out the parts-of-speech headers and eliminated the duplicate words. This has given me an alphabetical word list–a list of words not capitalized in English titles (if they are not the first or last word in the title).

I have a master’s degree in English Language Writing myself and believe my list to be correct…however I also believe that 911 was an inside-job; thus, my list really ought to be double-checked. No, I no longer have access to a professor. In my opinion, the best way to verify my list is to have it check-over by the authors/editors of a respectable English Grammar text-book (though I haven’t looked into this)…or the people at “The Chicago Manual of Style”…or any two/three fastidious high-school or college English Grammar teachers.

Maybe post it in Wiki and wait for input via the learned within the general public.

Nunajer