Which words should not be capitalized in Title Case?

Question

I would need a list of all words that are not capitalized in English titles.

I would also like to make sure if it's true, that all first and last words of a title are capitalized no matter what.

I'd really appreciate your help.

Answer 1

If you are referring to "title case," where some words are capitalized and some aren't, there is no one standard rule.

The AP stylebook says:

• Capitalize the principal words, including prepositions and conjunctions of four or more letters.
• Capitalize an article – the, a, an – or words of fewer than four letters if it is the first or last word in a title.

But the Chicago Manual of Style says:

Use lowercase for articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, for, nor), and prepositions, regardless of length, unless they are the first or last word of the title.

Wikipedia has a list of different ways title case can be applied. I tend to follow the second version in that list.

Note that some people prefer using "sentence case" in titles, where you only capitalize words as you would in a normal sentence. This is also known as "Down style." Apparently this is more typical in the UK than the USA, but opinions vary (as you might expect) on which is the correct form, or if there is even one.

Answer 2

It is also often up to the authors/editors discretion, for example if your title was fairly long (such as an essay) it might look very strange if a couple of words are lowercase. Also, of course, it should be consistent throughout, a lot of people seem to forget that!