Capitalisation for titles

As you know, we have once before jumped into the crystal clear waters of how to use capital letters.

But my fans have told me that they are hungry for more information. They have contacted me via twitter, facebook, gmail chat and telegram, begging me to give them more information about how to use capital letters in the right way.

And certainly, capital letters are confusing, not least when you are writing the title of something, such as a memoir you have just written about your life, or a thesis on the mating patterns of salmon, or even a power ballard. Questions you might find yourself asking are "Should my power ballard be written 'The Love Exchange Only Hands Out Monopoly Money', or 'The love exchange only hands out monopoly money', OR should only some of those words be in capitalised?"

Let me explain.

When you are writing titles, some words need to be capitalised, and others don't need to be. The ones that do need to be capitalised are:

•  The first and last words of the title; or
• All nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives

The words that should not be capitalised, unless they are the first or last word, are:

• articles (a, an, the) 
• conjunctions (and, but, for, nor, or, so, yet) 
• short adpositions (3 and less letters long): at, by, for, in, of, off, on, out, to, up
• some Latin abbreviations (most common only): c./ca./cca. (circa), et al. (et alii), etc. (et cetera), e.g. (exempli gratia), i.e. (id est), lb. (libra), vs. (versus). 
• medium adpositions (4 letters long): down, from, into, like, near, onto, over, than, with, upon.

For example

That Tall Man, He Runs Fast!

All these words fall into the first category of words that should be capitalised. On the other hand, a title like:

Who's That Man over there?

Would not need to be all capitals because the words in blue are prepositions, which are not to be capitalised.

Some other examples:

Believing the Lie (i.e.first word/article/last word)

Diary of a Whimpy Kid (i.e. first word/short adposition/article/adjective/last word)  

It Was Just a Bit of Fun (i.e first word/verb/adjective/article/noun/adposition/last word)

These Titles Seem to Be Getting Longer and Longer (first word/noun/verb/adposition/verb/verb/adjective/coordinating conjunction/adjective)

But HOLD THE FUCKING PHONE for a minute. You might have noticed that like some sort of hypocritical monstrous dictator of some sort, MC Grammar himself does not follow these rules in his own blog posts. What the fuck? Well, this is where capitalisation for titles gets hazy, because the rules for blog titles are still hazy. For example, the very fine Julie Burchill, a very long-established journalist, only capitalises the first word of her titles, and any proper nouns that come up, whereas the very funny Cody Johnston tends to capitalise everything except coordinating conjunctions. Both are highly respectable journalists and writers, both are well-school in the fine arts of grammar. So who to follow? Well, the best bet is to follow the rules I have set up here, but just remember that the internet is a changing beast, and what rules arise for capitalisations, we simply don't know yet.

To see us out, let's sit back, relax, and listen to the very excellent Capital Letters, who never mess up their capitalisations of titles, and hope that someday you can be like them.