Capitalization Rules Beyond the Basics

Look at this: The lord Of The Rings. Every word is spelled correctly, but something about the capital letters looks off, doesn't it? You already know to capitalize the first word of a sentence and every proper name, without even thinking about it — so why does a title need a different rule at all?

Titles — of a book, a chapter, a short story — follow a rule of their own, and it's worth learning on purpose, because it's tempting to just capitalize the first word and call the title finished.

The actual rule for titles

Capitalize the first word, the last word, and every important word in between. The words you skip are the small connecting ones in the middle — a, an, the, and, or, to, and short prepositions like of or in — unless one of them happens to be the very first or last word of the title.

That's why The Lord of the Rings keeps “of” and “the” lowercase: they're small connecting words sitting in the middle. It's also why A Wrinkle in Time capitalizes “A,” even though it's small — because here it's the very first word, and the first word always gets capitalized no matter how short it is.

This is a small rule, but it's the kind of detail that makes a title page look finished instead of unfinished, and it's exactly the sort of thing worth double-checking once before you consider a piece truly done.