Useful Tips on Capitalizing Titles Correctly

Most people think using capital letters for titles appropriately is a piece of cake. However, that is not what I see on a number of writing pieces out there. Some mistakes are still noticed in compositions written by certain writers. 

Prior to learning the tips, these are prerequisite concepts that we are to know well. 

Parts of Speech

Parts of speech (or speech parts) are grammatical classes of words determined by how the words function in a sentence/ clause/ phrase (Kane, 1983: 667). 

There are eight (8) types of speech parts in English:

• nouns e.g. mouse, sky, joy, blessing, reading (as gerund)
  
• verbs e.g. dive, recommend, drank, seen, was, getting (as present participle)
  
• adjectives e.g. therapeutic, balanced, deceitful, everyday, cheesy,likely, orderly
  
• adverbs e.g. gracefully, haphazardly, in a frantic manner
  
• prepositions e.g. in, above, below, beneath, over, beside, around/round
  
• pronouns e.g. she, it, he, I, you, they, we
  
• conjunctions e.g. because, as, while, whereas
  
• interjections e.g. eureka, alas, good heavens, geez, holy crap (vulgar)
  

These eight parts of speech are divided into two main groups:

• content  words : nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns.
  
• structural/ function words : the rest
  

My tips:

• always capitalize the first letter of content words
• always un-capitalize the first letter of structural/ function words (exception: if a function word comes first, capitalize its first letter)
  

Examples:

• "Three Entrepreneurs in a Fishbowl Teach Valuable Lessons"
• "English Social History: A Survey of Six Centuries - Chaucer to Queen Victoria" (Article 'a' is not a content word but its first letter is written in capital because it comes first in a sub title)
  
• "Without Backlinks, You Have Nothing" (exception: 'Without' is a structural word coming first so it's a must to capitalize its first letter)