Title Case vs Sentence Case: Which One Should Your Headings Use?

Somebody on every team has opened a document, looked at the headings and asked, "Are we capitalising these properly?" Half the room says every word needs a capital letter. The other half says only the first one. Both groups are sure they learned it at school.

There is no single correct answer, but there are practical rules for choosing a style, and a quick way to convert text you have already written. We ran a handful of real headings through the Case Converter to see what comes out, and a few of the results are worth knowing about before you paste them into a page.

The short version

• Title Case capitalises the main words of a heading: How to Back Up Your Phone.
• Sentence case capitalises only the first word and proper nouns, the way a normal sentence works: How to back up your phone. Some style guides also capitalise the first word after a colon, usually when a full sentence follows it.

Pick one for each kind of content and stick to it. A blog that mixes both looks careless, and that matters more than which side you choose. Plenty of product and documentation teams like sentence case because it reads calmly and copes better with long headings. Titles of books, films and formal reports often keep title case. If you work with a style guide, it wins over everything written here.

What "title case" really means

Many people think title case is "capitalise every word". It is not. Style guides such as AP and Chicago keep short words like a, an, the, of, and, to in lowercase unless they open or close the heading, and they differ on the details, such as how long a preposition has to be before it gets a capital (and editions of a guide can change the rule). Doing this properly means applying your guide's list of small words, plus a human who knows which words are names.

That is exactly where an automatic converter stops being a finished answer and becomes a first draft.

What the Case Converter did with real headings

We typed each line below into the tool in the browser, chose the style from the "Convert to" list and copied what appeared in the result box. Nothing was edited afterwards.

Heading with brand names

Input: how to back up your iPhone to iCloud and a Mac

• Title Case gave: How To Back Up Your Iphone To Icloud And A Mac
• Sentence case gave: How to back up your iphone to icloud and a mac

Two things to notice. Every word got a capital in Title Case, including To and And, so the tool does not apply the small-word rule. And the brand spellings iPhone, iCloud and Mac (in the Sentence case line) lost their original capitals, because the tool lowercases the text first and then applies the style. You need to put iPhone and iCloud back by hand.

Heading with an acronym

Input: 5 tips for writing a CV that gets read

• Title Case gave: 5 Tips For Writing A Cv That Gets Read
• Sentence case gave: 5 tips for writing a cv that gets read

The number stayed where it was, which is what you want, but CV became Cv. Acronyms always need a second look.

Heading with apostrophes

Input: don't panic: what to do when you can't log in

• Title Case gave: Don't Panic: What To Do When You Can't Log In
• Sentence case gave: Don't panic: what to do when you can't log in

One thing we noticed while testing: an early version of the tool capitalised the letter after an apostrophe, so don't turned into Don'T. We fixed that on 1 November 2026, and contractions like don't and can't now come out correctly. Brand names and acronyms are still a different story, so read your heading once before you publish.

Rescuing text typed with Caps Lock on

Another common reason to open a case converter is fixing text typed with Caps Lock on. Input: WHY IS MY TEXT SHOUTING? i left caps lock on. it's 3pm in Karachi!

• Sentence case gave: Why is my text shouting? I left caps lock on. It's 3pm in karachi!
• lowercase gave: why is my text shouting? i left caps lock on. it's 3pm in karachi!

It repaired the shouting and the start of each sentence, and left the digits, the apostrophe and the punctuation alone. It cannot know that Karachi is a place, so the city name needs its capital back. A good habit is to run the conversion first and then read the result once, looking only for names, acronyms and brands.

A one-minute routine for headings

1. Paste your headings into the Case Converter, one per line. Line breaks and blank lines are kept (we tried three lines with a blank one in the middle and the layout came back unchanged).
2. Choose the style your guide asks for, then remember that both styles will flatten names and acronyms.
3. Scan for proper nouns, brands and acronyms and fix those.
4. In Title Case, apply your guide's rules for articles, conjunctions, prepositions and the first and last word of the heading.
5. Check anything after a colon. Some guides capitalise the first word after it and some do not.

When the other styles matter

The same tool also has the naming styles developers use. For the line user first name_v2 -- order 66 of 2026 we got:

• camelCase: userFirstNameV2Order66Of2026
• PascalCase: UserFirstNameV2Order66Of2026
• snake_case: user_first_name_v2_order_66_of_2026
• kebab-case: user-first-name-v2-order-66-of-2026
• CONSTANT_CASE: USER_FIRST_NAME_V2_ORDER_66_OF_2026

In this test the double dash was dropped and the words were joined, which suits a simple variable or file name, although the naming rules of your language or system still apply. Mixed-case input behaves less obviously: iPhone in the middle of a line came out as IPhone in camelCase and as i_phone in snake_case, and HTTPResponse was not split at all (it became Httpresponse in camelCase). If an identifier already contains an acronym, type it with plain spaces first. For web addresses specifically, Text to Slug is built for the job.

Privacy, files and downloads

The tool page carries the ""You can open a text file and download the result: in our test the downloaded file was named result.txt and contained exactly the converted text, nothing added. The small Toolysite.com notice that guests and free-plan users see applies to PDF and image downloads, and paid plans do not have it. If you also need the number of words or characters in a heading, Word Counter does that, and Text Compare will show you what changed between two versions.

Troubleshooting

• The result box is empty. The tool needs text in the Input box first. Paste it, then pick a style from the "Convert to" list.
• Brand names lost their capitals. That is expected, because the text is lowercased before the style is applied. Retype iPhone, iCloud and similar names after converting.
• Contractions look wrong in Title Case. Use Sentence case, or correct the letter after the apostrophe by hand.

Frequently asked questions

Is title case the same as capitalising every word?

No. The tool capitalises every word when you choose Title Case, but style guides usually keep short words such as of, and and to in lowercase. Treat the result as a draft and adjust it to your guide.

Which is better for SEO titles, title case or sentence case?

We are not aware of any published preference from search engines. Choose the style that reads best to your audience and use it everywhere on the site.

Does Title Case handle contractions like can't?

Yes. After a fix on 1 November 2026, the tool keeps contractions such as don't and can't intact. Brand names and acronyms with unusual capitals (iPhone, CV) still need a manual check.

Will it keep my line breaks?

Yes. In our test with three lines and a blank line between them, the line breaks and the empty line were preserved in Title Case and Sentence case. The camelCase, snake_case and kebab-case styles join everything into one identifier.

Does it change numbers and punctuation?

Digits and punctuation stayed as they were in the title, sentence and caps-lock tests. The programming styles drop punctuation and spaces on purpose.

Key takeaways

• Choose title case or sentence case once and apply it everywhere.
• The converter gives you a fast first draft, not a finished headline.
• Always re-check brand names, acronyms, city names and contractions.

Tip: every tool page shows a badge at the top: "", and "Uploaded for processing" means it is uploaded temporarily and deleted automatically, normally within about one hour.