: Re: Which words should not be capitalized in Title Case? 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

@LarsenBagley300

Vote Up Vote Down

The first letter of the first word is always capitalized (no ifs, ands, or buts... unless you lead with if, and, but as the first word of your title.)

In Grammar you have two categories of words: Content Words and Function Words. Content words are words with a very specific meaning or meanings and include Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, and Adverbs. All Content Words in a title must be capitalized.

Function Words are words with nebulousness meaning or meaning that will change meaning based on usage with respect to other words in a sentance of statement. Not all function words should be lower case, but most are acceptable. Pronouns usually are capitalized, especially when they are the subject of the title sentence or are possessives (pronouns that denote ownership). As are interjections (Yeehaw! Gosh Darn! Drat!).

From there, each significant word in the title is capitalized, while the articles (a, an, the) conjunctions (and, or, but, nor), subordinate conjunctions (if, either, neither, nor, then, else, ect.) and occasionally adpostitions (words that reflect spacial or temporal relations with respect to other words, like before, in, on, above, below). While not a rule, Subordinates and Adpositions that exceed three letter spelling should be capitalized).

Finally, as a rule, when ordering books alphabetically by title, the word "The" is omitted if it is the first word in the title, and the Content word is used instead. If the book is a volume in a series, then it is ordered by release date under the serie's main title ("Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" is the first book and will come before "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" despite "Chamber" taking alphabetical precedence to "Philosopher").

(0)

Login to post a comment!