• Deciding which words to capitalize in the title of an essay or article can be confusing, with different style guides and editors recommending different rules. Unfortunately, you can't avoid confusion by capitalizing everything: most editors and teachers consider it wrong and offer corrections. So how do you use proper capitalization in titles? The following rules should provide guidelines, though you should check with your instructor or editor to determine their exact preferences.
  
  

Three Letters or More

• Generally, most acceptable standards for title capitalization suggest capitalizing everything except articles, prepositions and coordinating conjunctions, or words like "and," "the," "of" and "or." Some prepositions, however, are longer: "about," "among," "between," etc. Generally, modern popular opinion is to capitalize these. The first word in a title should always be capitalized.
  
  

Nouns, Pronouns, Verbs, Adverbs and Adjectives

• If articles, prepositions, and coordinating conjunctions are not to be capitalized, that leaves nearly every other type of word (nouns, pronouns, adverbs, adjectives, verbs and subordinating conjunctions) to be capitalized. There is some crossover between here and the rule pertaining to words letters or less in length. "It" is a pronoun and "is" (and all its conjugated forms) is a verb, but both are less than three letters. Standard practice is to capitalize these as well. Similarly, "in" can require capitalization depending on how it is used. "In" is a tricky word, in that it is most often a preposition, which would not be capitalized unless it starts or ends your title (grammatically, you should never end a title, or sentence, with a preposition). It can also be an adverb in rare cases when it answers a question like "how," "when," or "how much." In these cases, "in" should be capitalized in your title.
  
  

First and Last Words

• In any case, the very first and very last words should be capitalized, no matter what part of speech they fall under. For example, in an academic essay on Hamlet titled "To Be or Not to Be: the Morals of Hamlet Six Centuries On," you would capitalize "To" at the beginning, even though, as an infinitive, is not capitalized later. You would also capitalize "On," as it ends the title, even though it, too, would not be capitalized in any other position in the title.
  
  

First Word Only

• This rule applies only to writing journalistic articles and headlines. Traditionally, in most newspapers and magazines, you will only find the first word of the title, regardless of which part of speech it is, capitalized. The exception, of course, being in the case of proper nouns and names, which will always be capitalized in any title or headline. This is a rule you most likely will only have to worry about as a journalism student; publications often write headlines and article titles in the editing phase.