Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style

by Benjamin Dreyer

Title case is the convention of capitalizing, in titles of works (books, book chapters, plays, movies—you get the idea) and, often though not always, in newspaper and magazine headlines, the first letter of all the important words. Which are the important words of a title? the first word and the last word all nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs Which are the words that don’t make the capital cut? articles (“a,” “an,” “the”) conjunctions (“and,” “but,” “if,” “or,” etc.) Then clarity goes to heck. What about prepositions? If you say “prepositions are invariably to be lowercased,” as some indeed say, you’re going to be up against titles like Seven against Thebes or I Served alongside Rommel, and that certainly won’t do. The cleverer people endorse lowercasing the shorter prepositions, of which there are many, including “at,” “by,” “but,” “from,” “into,” “of,” “to,” and “with,” and capping the longer ones, like “despite,” “during,” and “toward.” I’ll admit that the four-letter prepositions can cause puzzlement—I’d certainly never cap “with,” but a lowercase “over” can look a little underrespected.