Advice for Bloggers on Headline Capitalization

Attention bloggers: I know you want your headlines to look professional. I can tell by how you capitalize them. You know that, in many publishing styles, most words in a headline are capitalized, but not all of them. So you sort of go with your gut and end up writing blog post headlines like this:

Is it Safe for Women to Travel Alone in India?

So close. But that's not quite what you were aiming for.

As most people know, very small words in a title case headline start with lowercase letters. But not all small words. Just some of them.

Let me back up and say that headline capitalization isTravel  not a right-or-wrong thing. There are no grammar or writing rules at work here. Just conventions -- standards followed by publishers to ensure that the work they produce is polished according to some simple, consistent logic.

That logic varies a bit from publisher to publisher, but some points are nearly universal. For example, every headline style I know of says to lowercase many prepositions, articles, and conjunctions but to uppercase verbs, nouns, and pronouns.

are not. "Is" is a verb and "it" is a pronoun. So while "in" would usually start with a lowercase I in a title case headline, "it" and "is" would start with a capital I. In other words, the part of speech is more important than how long the word is.

But prepositions have another twist: If a preposition is integral to the verb -- as in what's called a phrasal verb -- keep it uppercase.

Human Rights Advocates to Look In on Prisoners

Here, the word "in" is part of a phrasal verb. When you take "in" from "look in," it changes the meaning. Throw up, count down, call out, ask out,  run over -- these are all examples of phrasal verbs in which the second word can't be removed without changing the meaning. For headline capitalization purposes, prepositions that are part of a phrasal verb get higher billing that regular old prepositions.

If you want a simple set of guidelines for capitalizing your own headlines, here, based on a lot of news styles, is what I would recommend:

Capitalize the first letter of most words.

Lowercase articles (a, an and the) unless the very first or very last word of the headline.

Lowercase short conjunctions (and, so, but, and or)

Lowercase prepositions of three or fewer letters (in, at, to, on) but capitalize the first letter of longer prepositions (without, from, until, through, etc.). Disregard this rule if the preposition is part of a phrasal verb.

Pay careful attention to “is” and “it.” A verb and preposition, respectively, these should probably start with a capital letter in your headlines.

 

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