Capitalizing titles and subtitles of works

In both titles and subtitles, capitalize major words (nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs).

The Canadian Green Page

Do not capitalize minor words (articles, prepositions, and coordinating conjunctions) unless they are the first or last word of a title or subtitle.

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web

“Fire and Ice”

“I Want to Hold Your Hand”

A River Runs through It

Capitalize the second part of a hyphenated term in a title if it is a major word but not if it is a minor word.

Seizing the Enigma: The Race to Break the German U-Boat Codes

How to Make Left-hand Turns in Boston

Capitalize chapter titles and the titles of other major divisions of a work following the same guidelines used for titles of complete works.

“Work and Play” in Santayana’s The Nature of Beauty

“Size Matters” on the Web site Discovery Channel Online

Exercise: Capitalization

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Titles that are italicized

Titles that are not italicized

Quotation marks with titles

noun The name of a person, place, thing, or an idea.

pronoun A word used in place of a noun. Usually the pronoun substitutes for a specific noun, known as its antecedent.

verb A word that expresses action (jump, think) or being (is, was, seems). A sentence's verb is composed of a main verb possibly preceded by one or more helping verbs.

adjective A word that modifies or describes a noun or pronoun: lame, old, rare, beautiful; also the articles a, an, the.

adverb A word that modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb: very, smoothly, never.

article The words a, an, the, used to mark a noun.

preposition A word placed before a noun or noun equivalent to form a phrase modifying another word in the sentence: They fell in line with the crowd.

coordinating conjunction and, but, or, nor, for, so, yet; used to join elements of equal grammatical form.