Dealing With Formal and Descriptive Titles

Last week, I outlined some of the different rules for capping a composition title.

I noted that one wrinkle in applying sentence-style capitalization to the title of a book, poem, song, or other work of art was determining whether a person’s title was formal or descriptive. Formal titles are, in essence, proper nouns and are capped, both in the main text and in headlines and titles. Descriptive titles are common nouns and are lowercased.

So how do you distinguish a formal title from a desc...