Title Case vs Sentence Case: Which Style Should Your Headlines Use?

Look at the headlines on any website and you will notice two styles: "How to Write a Great Headline" and "How to write a great headline". Neither is wrong, but mixing them looks careless.

Sentence case

Only the first word and proper nouns are capitalised, exactly as in a normal sentence. It reads as friendly and conversational. Many modern publishers and software companies prefer it because it is easier to apply consistently and easier to read.

Title case

Most major words are capitalised. It looks formal and traditional, and is common in book titles, newspaper headlines in some countries, and many marketing sites.

The rules for small words

Style guides disagree on details, which is why title case is harder to apply. A typical convention is:

• Capitalise the first and last word.
• Capitalise nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.
• Lowercase short articles (a, an, the), short conjunctions (and, but, or) and short prepositions (in, on, at, of).
• Many guides capitalise longer prepositions (such as "Between" or "Through") and any word after a colon.

AP style, Chicago, APA and MLA each have their own thresholds for prepositions, so choose one guide and stay with it.

How to choose

• Brand voice: a relaxed brand suits sentence case; a formal or editorial one suits title case.
• Platform: many apps and design systems specify sentence case for interface labels.
• Consistency: the key point is to use one style everywhere: headlines, buttons, menus and email subject lines.

Does it affect SEO?

Search engines do not rank pages by capitalisation. Choose the style that looks clean and encourages clicks.

Common mistakes

• Capitalising every single word, including "And" and "The" in the middle of a title.
• Writing acronyms inconsistently (PDF, not Pdf).
• Forgetting proper nouns in sentence case, such as names of people, products and places.
• Leaving a headline in ALL CAPS, which is harder to read and can look like shouting.

Fixing a batch quickly

If you have many headings to standardise, paste them into a case converter and review the output, since automatic tools cannot know every brand name or acronym. Then correct exceptions by hand.

Practical tip

Write a short style note for your project: "We use sentence case for all headings and buttons; brand names keep their official capitalisation." It saves arguments and keeps everything consistent.

Choose a style, document it, and apply it everywhere.