Title case, sentence case and the rest: a quick guide
Headlines, code, spreadsheets, and slugs all have their own capitalization conventions. Knowing the names — and being able to switch between them instantly — saves a surprising amount of retyping.
The cases you'll meet
- Sentence case — Only the first word (and proper nouns) capitalized. "This is sentence case." Best for body text and most modern UI.
- Title Case — Major Words Capitalized. Used for headlines and titles. (Small words like "a," "the," "of" usually stay lowercase.)
- UPPERCASE — ALL CAPITALS. For emphasis, acronyms, or constants in code — but hard to read in long stretches.
- lowercase — no capitals. A stylistic choice, or for normalizing data.
- camelCase — firstWordLowerRestCapitalized. Standard for variables in many programming languages.
- snake_case — words_joined_by_underscores. Common in Python and database columns.
- kebab-case — words-joined-by-hyphens. The standard for URLs and file names.
When each one wins
- Writing a headline? Title Case or sentence case, consistently.
- Naming a URL or file? kebab-case — lowercase and hyphens are safest.
- Writing code? Follow the language's convention (camelCase, snake_case).
- Cleaning up messy data — like ALL-CAPS names pasted from a form? Convert to sentence or title case.
Convert, don't retype
Retyping a paragraph to change its case is a waste of time and a source of typos. A case converter transforms text between all of these in one click — paste, pick the case, copy the result.