As I was typing up yesterday’s post, a thought occurred to me: Should I capitalize every [major] word in my post titles, or just capitalize the first word? It’s funny, but I had never really thought of that before. If you look at some of my other posts on this blog, you can see that with some I’ve capitalized every word, but with others I’ve only capitalized the first word.
Below is a list of the web’s to 20 blogs (according to Technorati) and whether or not they capitalize every word in the headline.
- The Huffington Post – YES
- Mashable – YES
- TechCrunch – YES
- Gizmodo – YES
- Gawker – YES
- Engadget – NO
- The Daily Beast – YES
- TMZ – YES
- Boing Boing – NO
- Hot Air – NO
- ThinkProgress – YES
- Mediaite – YES
- CNN Political Tracker – NO
- Jezebel – YES
- LifeHacker – YES
- ReadWriteWeb – YES
- Deadline – YES
- The Caucus – YES
- Kotaku – YES
- Deadspin – YES
So the verdict?
- 16/20 blogs DO capitalize every major word in their headlines.
- 4/20 blogs DO NOT capitalize every major word in their headlines.
(On a separate note, is it bad that I’ve never heard of nearly half of these blogs before??)
Ok, so there’s some pretty good data there. But let’s niche down a little bit. After a cursory glance at the front pages of Technorati’s top 20 small business blogs, I can report the following:
- 17/20 top small business blogs DO capitalize every major word in their headlines
- 1/20 top small business blog DOES NOT capitalize every major word in its headlines
- (2/20 top small business blogs had their headlines in all caps)
And to round out my little survey here, I’m going to go check out four of my personal favorite top blogs about blogging:
- Copyblogger – YES
- ProBlogger – YES
- DavidRisley.com – YES
- Entrepreneurs-Journey.com – YES
Well, that settles it then. From now on, I’m going to capitalize the major words in my post headlines!
And one final note: I find it odd, that the article headings in most print newspapers are NOT capitalized… Check out Newseum to see for yourself.
{ 36 comments… read them below or add one }
I always capitalize my headlines – I think they stand out better in feed readers. I’ll also make sure to capitalize ALL of one word, again, for visual impact.
Oooo. I kind of like the idea of capitalizing all of one word. Thanks for the tip, Barbara!
I do that too – usually the word YOU when I use it. Most people are highly interested in themselves. :-)
Oooo! Another great idea! Man… I hesitated about writing this post because I didn’t know if anyone would be interested, but it’s getting some great comments. Thanks, Gail!
I’ve always considered a headline the ‘title’ to any article I write and, thanks to my teachers in school way back when, titles were to have the majority of the words capitalized based on how they fit in with the message. Of course, there are always going to be those little nuances like, when can you capitalize the word ‘is’ in a title?
Oddly enough, in some cases you should, others…you don’t. Damn rules. :)
Good read though and very impressive foot work on a topic that is not talked about as much as it should be. Grammar and such should be just as important as the overall message being shared.
-Rich
I personally feel you should always capitalize “is” in a headline. Sure, it’s a short word, but it’s a pretty important verb!
I minored in editing in college (though you wouldn’t know it by reading a lot of my posts…), so I agree with what you said about grammar being important! I’d say getting your idea across is the most important thing, but doing it in a way that doesn’t distract people is definitely extremely important.
The English language is fond of rules and it brings up and your article brings up an interesting point; it is correct to capitalize a title but not all words in a title are necessarily to be capitalized such as: “How to Locate Your Lost Relatives in a Short Period of Time”.
If you were to do some split testing of this (Twitter is good for this) you would find the answer to this very quickly. Another great example is using caps in your auto-responder titles. Again, you would find your open rates higher with the caps version.
Nice work mate, will look forward to other posts of yours!
Cheers!
In addition to minoring in editing (as stated in my above reply), I majored in linguistics at university. As a linguist and not, say, as someone who studied English, I’m more of a fan descriptive (rules based on how people actually speak) rules rather prescriptive (how people “should” speak, or the “correct” way to speak) grammar rules. And that’s why I did this little exercise in this post. I’ve got several writing style guides that say exactly what you should do and exactly what you should capitalize, etc., but I wanted to see what people ACTUALLY USE.
I don’t remember exactly what the “rules” are for capitalizing or not capitalizing every word in a headline (my style/writing guides are all in storage right now), but I personally capitalize 1) the first word, 2) all nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and pronouns. I don’t capitalize 1) conjunctions, 2) prepositions, or 3) articles. I think that covers it…?
Looks like I need to go get the books out and see what they say!
So are you saying, Dan, that capitalizing every (major) word in your Tweets (and autoresponder titles, email subjects, etc.) will get them read more? That’s awesome! What a great tip! Thanks!
I agree with you Tristan, it’s really all about people and how we communicate with one another. Rules, as you point out, are perhaps the “correct” method but most of us speak in shorthand, slang and other derivatives.
While perfection is a waste of time, effectiveness is invaluable and that is what split testing is all about. Yes, caps do make a difference in your open rates regardless of what you are sending out.
So what I’m really suggesting is bigger than just using caps on titles…do your testing regardless of whatever medium you decide to put out there.
Dan, I’m intrigued by Twitter split testing. How can you ensure that the reason people click on your Tweets is capitalization (or whatever else you’re testing) and not influenced by time of day, whether people have already seen you Tweet it or not, day of the week, etc.?
If you’re new to Twitter you’re probably hand posting. Consider using an automated Tweet service.
When you do this, you can run a few different versions of whatever you’re posting. In this case it is an article title. Since you normally use a URL shortener such as bit.ly, you can see your analytics much in the same way you would with Google. It then becomes very apparent what Tweets are performing and which are flops.
Email me if you need more details…hope that gives you some new ideas though.
Hey, this is an interesting post! I Have A Bad Habit Of Capitalizing The First Letter Of Every Single Word, Can You Tell? In All Of My Titles. I know I probably shouldn`t capitalize worlds like `the` and `a` and `to` but I do it anyway. I should stop.
Thanks for the great info! :P
@Dan: Thanks for the further clarification. I just might have to send off an email your way.
@Elise: Nah, you don’t need to stop if you don’t want to. It’s your blog! Do whatever you want! I was just curious so did a bit of research and decided to post my findings.
Dang I would never have thought to search out this kind of information. Very impressive. I like how you delve into all of these little things that can actually be useful.
Good, glad this is helpful. Thanks for the feedback, Mitchell, and thanks for commenting!
Hi Tristan
I usually capitalise the first letter of every word in my headings. That was what I was taught was correct in school but now it depends on the heading. Interesting topic discussion Tristan. Only know a few of the blogs you mention and the ones I know are big blogs and not in my niche. Think it depends on the title too. Thanks for sharing.
Patricia Perth Australia
Hey Tristan,
I faced this dilemma and decided to go with the capitalisation. I don’t exactly know why I chose that way over sentence case, but it just seemed to fit better.
@Elise I do that too, and always have. While I think having some lowercase letters improves readability, I can’t seem to justify having them!
Nice blog you got here by the way!
Thanks, Jay! I like your blog as well.
Being the visual person that I am, I believe in capitalizing titles. And without really knowing if it is right or wrong, I have always done it. The above comments are really interesting…
Capitalizing tweets is a big help in getting more ‘re-tweets’.
I always use caps in my titles and tweets which has helped me become one of the most influential people within my niche on Twitter!
As much as it pains me to break any sort of grammar rule (being English, I hate the modern bastardization of the English language), but post titles just don’t seem as punchy without those capital letters. I use them and it really helps pick out the key words in your title, especially when a lot of web browsing is done with scanning eyes.
I love the modern bastardization of the English language! It just shows that’s a living, breathing, dynamic organism and not a foot-dragging relic. Besides, all of the “rules” are either borrowed from Latin or 100% the personal preferences and biases of whatever bishop wrote whatever grammar back in England several centuries ago.
Found you through Foolish Adventure. Nice site! Keep up the good work.
Thanks, Laura-Jane! Foolish Adventure is a ton of fun to listen to, isn’t it?
I have always thought that capping words help[ed make the titles “Pop” I do it sometimes for anchor text too for the same reason. I had never stopped to see if it was the “right” thing to do or not. It is nice to see that a lot of other expert type Blogs do the same, makes me pretty sure the theory is universal.
I’ve always just followed the same rules I learned in school. That is to capitalize every major word in the titles of books, articles, essays, and now my blog posts!
Yep, those are the rules I learned, too. I don’t know, though… I for some reason naturally don’t want to capitalize every major word! Maybe it’s because I feel like my headlines are more like intros to the posts and less like titles.
Back in the day, when all we had were typewriters, we needed ways to distinguish titles from the body text. Attention-grabbing capitalization schemes were important.
But now, with CSS and the near-endless attention-getting styles available, there’s no need to decrease the readability of our titles by capitalizing every word.
Tom, do you really think increasing every word decreases readability? Hmmm… As I said, I personally prefer sentence case (just first word capitalized), but everyone else seems to prefer to capitalize every word. I wonder if it’s because I think it’s easier to read… Good food for thought!
This is really interesting post.
Believe it or not, i just edited all my post titles for two days work because they were not capitalized. ( they were approx 150 posts) =(
I just feel capitalized is better.
Awesome! Glad you found the post interesting and useful, Kimi. Thanks for commenting!
To answer your question… it depends. Some blog themes actually override your preference anyways.
Really? I’ve never used a theme before that overrides those preferences. Interesting… Thanks for the comment, Brandon.
Just going back through your older posts to see what other awsome tips I can pick up. I’ll toss my ante in with the rest; my grammer teacher from long ago still pushes me around and I feel capitalizing titles (except for “the” and “a” and such) is the proper way to go. It drives me nuts though when folks use ALL CAPS for the entire title. But, that’s just me.
Yeah, I’m not a huge fan of ALL CAPS either, Allan. But I’m sure there are people out there who are and they get a kick out of it, so I guess there are blogs that need to cater to them. Er… Yeah…
Hey Tristan,
I am always asking myself this question when I am about to push the Publish button. My first articles were written only with the first word capital letter, but it was not that “eye-catchy” so now I have all the words in the title with the first capital letter.
But still not sure if it is not too “marketing”.
Adam
Tristan,
I believe this can be used for a study. What do you think? And what the readers more likely to click? Can it affect traffic too? Hmm interesting! Thanks for the post Tristan!
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