American Psychological Association
title-case rules
For behavioral and social-science papers.
The APA rules
APA style (7th edition) is the standard for psychology, education, and social-science publishing.
- Capitalize the first word of the title and subtitle.
- Capitalize all major words, including the second part of hyphenated compounds.
- Capitalize all words of four or more letters — even if they are prepositions or conjunctions. This is the distinctive APA rule.
- Lowercase short words of three or fewer letters that aren't the first word.
- Capitalize after a colon.
Note: APA uses sentence case for article titles in reference lists and figure captions.
Worked examples
The same set of titles, converted under American Psychological Association rules. Try them yourself by switching the style pill on the homepage.
| Input | APA |
|---|---|
with great power comes great responsibility |
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility |
a study of cognitive biases in decision making |
A Study of Cognitive Biases in Decision Making |
the role of context in language acquisition |
The Role of Context in Language Acquisition |
when good intentions go wrong |
When Good Intentions Go Wrong |
Edge cases we handle
- Proper nouns — iPhone, JavaScript, NASA stay capitalized correctly mid-title.
- Hyphenated compounds — handled per APA's specific rule.
- After a colon — the first word after a colon is capitalized.
- Acronyms and ALLCAPS runs — preserved as-is.
Try APA title case now.
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