Title case vs sentence case: which one to use

Title case capitalizes the main words: “How to Clean Text Copied from a PDF.” Sentence case capitalizes the first word and proper nouns: “How to clean text copied from a PDF.” Neither is more correct. They signal different kinds of pages.

Use sentence case for most web headings

Google’s own material, GOV.UK, and a lot of product UI use sentence case. It is quieter, easier to scan in a long sidebar, and it does not fight with brand names that have their own capitalization (iPhone, npm, YouTube).

If your site already has 200 tool titles in title case, stay consistent on those titles. Consistency beats a style-guide argument. New editorial pages — guides, about, policy — read better in sentence case.

Use title case when the line is a name

Book titles, film titles, and some academic paper titles still expect title case. So do many news headlines in the US. If you are quoting a work, keep the work’s own capitalization.

Small words and why converters disagree

Title-case tools argue about “a,” “and,” “to,” “from,” and “with.” Chicago Manual of Style lowercases short prepositions. APA title case capitalizes words of four letters or more, so “From” and “With” go up. AP is closer to Chicago but has its own exceptions.

TextFixer’s Title Case tool follows a Chicago-like list: articles, short coordinating conjunctions, and short prepositions stay lowercase unless they start or end the heading. That is a default, not a law. If you write for a journal, use that journal’s list.

Always re-read after a converter

Automatic title case will turn “iOS and eBay in the US” into “Ios And Ebay In The Us.” It cannot see brand rules. Convert, then fix the words a person would be embarrassed to publish. That two-second pass is the difference between a tool and a typesetter.