Title Case and Sentence Case are the two main styles used for headlines and titles. But when should you use Title Case and when is Sentence Case preferred?
To refresh your memory,
- Title Case means capitalizing important words and leaving minor words lower case.
- In Sentence Case only the first word and proper nouns are capitalized.
An example of Title Case could be Mark Manson’s famous article, book, and film, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. The same title in Sentence Case would be The subtle art of not giving a f*ck.
Generally, the following should always use Title Case:
- Book titles
- Newspaper titles
- Movie, TV show, and game titles
- Song and album titles
Wheras the following may use either Title Case or Sentence case:
- Article titles
- Blog titles
- Essay titles
- Calls To Action
Finally, the following are generally formatted in Sentence Case:
- Social Media posts
- Email subject lines
If you are writing an article for a business, organization, or website, they may have style guidelines on which format you should use so you should check with them.
If you’re writing for your own blog or on a site such as Medium.com or Substack you are generally free to choose, although most blog and article writers choose Title Case for the main heading (H1). Subheadings (H2) are often formatted with Sentence Case. See our article How Should I Format My Title for Medium for a full guide.
For Calls To Action, such as signup or purchase buttons on a website, general practice is to use Title Case if it is short, commanding CTA for example Buy Now and Sentence Case for softer, longer CTAs like Try now for free. However, you may want to perform some A/B testing to see what works best for your specific situation.