Title Case Converter for Papers & Reference Lists (APA, MLA, Chicago, AP)
Title case for your paper and its headings, sentence case for your APA reference list.
Free preview.
- Free preview: the first words of the converted titles or reference list (up to 100), with the first changes explained (up to 10).
- Locked until you unlock it: download and copy.
- Unlock: Pro pass, ₹179 for 30 days, a one-time payment that never renews.
Ways to unlock shows how to get the full result.
Printing this result is locked in the free preview.
What to convert
Type in any case, up to 500 lines. In APA, start a line with # to ##### for heading levels 1 to 5.
Result
What changed and why
Click a word to switch its capital, for example to keep the capital of a name; click it again to go back to the rule.
Locked in the free preview. Opens the ways to unlock this result.
Locked in the free preview. Batch runs unlock with a pass.
Locked in the free preview. Query results unlock with a pass.
About the Title Case Converter for Papers & Reference Lists (APA, MLA, Chicago, AP)
A title is capitalized differently depending on where it goes in a paper. In APA 7, the title of your paper, its headings and the titles of works you name in the text take title case (every word of four letters or more gets a capital), while the titles of articles, books, chapters, reports and web pages in the reference list take sentence case — even when the original used title case — and journal names keep title case. MLA 9 uses title case for English titles everywhere, Chicago 18 uses title case unless a publisher asks for sentence case, and AP has its own rule for composition titles.
Paste your titles and headings, one per line, or a whole reference list: the tool finds the title (and the journal or book name) in each entry and changes only those, leaving the authors, dates, volumes and DOIs as you typed them. It marks APA heading levels, keeps abbreviations in capitals, capitalizes the nouns APA keeps before a number (“Experiment 2”), and tells you why each word changed. The capitalization comes from the same engine as the Title Capitalization Tool, so both pages give the same title case; this page adds APA’s own sentence-case rules. Everything runs in your browser; with a Pro pass you copy or download the whole result, and without one you see a free preview of it.
How to use it
- Choose what your text is: Titles and headings (one per line) or A reference list.
- Pick the style: APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 or AP. For APA or Chicago titles, also pick the case: title case for the paper, sentence case for reference-list titles. A reference list is read in the style it is written in; the page tells you when its entries look like another style.
- Paste or type your text. In APA, start a heading with # for level 1, ## for level 2 and so on to #####; levels 4 and 5 get their closing full stop.
- Read What changed and why. Click a word to switch its capital — above all to give a name back its capital after sentence case.
- Copy the result or download it as a .txt file — with a pass, or after unlocking this result. Without either, you see a free preview of it.
Examples
the effects of morning light on attention in primary classrooms
Title case (title page, headings): The Effects of Morning Light on Attention in Primary Classrooms Sentence case (reference list): The effects of morning light on attention in primary classrooms
Okafor, N. A., & Lindqvist, M. (2021). The Effects Of Morning Light On Student Attention In Rural Schools. Journal of classroom studies, 113(4), 512–530.
Okafor, N. A., & Lindqvist, M. (2021). The effects of morning light on student attention in rural schools. Journal of Classroom Studies, 113(4), 512–530.
The article title goes into sentence case and the journal name into title case; the authors, year, volume, issue and pages stay as typed.
# method ## participants and setting #### sampling across the school year
Method (level 1: centred, bold) Participants and Setting (level 2: flush left, bold) Sampling Across the School Year. (level 4: indented, bold, with a full stop)
Results Of Experiment 2 In Type 2 Diabetes
Results of Experiment 2 in Type 2 diabetes
Garcia, Elena. "the history of the bicycle in europe." journal of cycling history, vol. 41, no. 2, 2020, pp. 200-215.
Garcia, Elena. "The History of the Bicycle in Europe." Journal of Cycling History, vol. 41, no. 2, 2020, pp. 200-215.
Common uses
- Fixing the article and book titles of an APA reference list that a database or citation manager gave in title case.
- Checking the capitals of a paper’s title and of its APA headings, level by level.
- Putting the titles of an MLA works-cited list or a Chicago bibliography into the style’s title case.
- AP-style titles of books, films and songs for an article or a blog post.
Which case each part of a paper takes
- APA 7, title case: the title of your paper, the section labels and headings of every level, titles of articles, books, reports and other works when you name them in the text, test names, and the names of journals and other periodicals. Only articles, short conjunctions and short prepositions of three letters or fewer stay lower case, and the second part of a hyphenated major word is capitalized (Self-Report). See APA Style on title case.
- APA 7, sentence case: the titles of articles, books, reports, web pages and other works in the reference list, even when the work itself uses title case. A capital stays on the first word, the first word after a colon, proper nouns, and nouns followed by a numeral or a letter. See APA Style on sentence case.
- MLA 9: the first word, the last word and every principal word of an English title are capitalized, in your text and in the works-cited list alike; prepositions stay lower case in the middle however long they are, including two-word ones such as according to. See the MLA Style Center on capitalizing titles and two-word prepositions.
- Chicago 18: title case, which the 18th edition calls what older editions named headline style; prepositions of five letters or more are now capitalized (Much Ado About Nothing, but A Room with a View). Sentence case is an option some publishers and fields use. See what is new in the 18th edition.
- AP: titles of books, films, songs and other compositions get capitals on their principal words, short verbs such as Is included; articles, and conjunctions and prepositions of three letters or fewer, stay lower case unless they come first or last. The AP Stylebook itself needs a subscription.
How a reference list is fixed
The entries are found at blank lines, at their numbers (1. or [1]), or one per line, as a word processor pastes a list. Each entry is read in the style you pick — the same reading the Reference List Checker uses — to find its title and the journal, book or site it appears in. Then only the letters of those parts are re-capitalized:
- APA: titles of articles, books, chapters, reports, theses and web pages in sentence case; journal, magazine and newspaper names in title case; the book a chapter appears in in sentence case; website and platform names as you typed them, because they are names.
- MLA and Chicago: the title and the container (journal, book, website) in the style’s title case.
Everything else — the authors, the date, the edition, the volume, issue and pages, the publisher, the DOI or URL, the line breaks and blank lines — stays exactly as typed. An entry whose title cannot be found is left alone and marked, so nothing is changed by guesswork. When most titles of an APA list are typed in title case, short titles of two or three words are read that way too.
Names, abbreviations and words to check
- Abbreviations typed in capitals (NASA, COVID-19, PTSD) and words with capitals inside (iPhone, YouTube) keep them, and known country, language and holiday names keep their capital in sentence case.
- Other names cannot always be recognized: in a title typed in title case, every major word starts with a capital, so a name looks like any other word. After sentence case such titles are marked, and you click each name — a person, a place, an organization, a program such as Python — to give it its capital back. In a short title the reverse can happen: capitals are kept as likely names, and you click the ones that are ordinary words.
- Small words with two jobs (up in set up, than, like) are read from their neighbours, and a note says when the other reading would change the result. The Title Capitalization Tool explains every word and compares all its styles side by side, including the Bluebook.
Limitations
- English titles only. MLA, Chicago and APA treat titles in other languages by those languages’ own rules.
- Reference entries are read by their layout. An entry in an unusual layout may not be read; it is then left unchanged and marked.
- Plain text cannot carry italics or bold: the converted list keeps the words, and you keep or add the italics and the heading formats in your document.
- Names typed in title case cannot be told from ordinary words: check them after sentence case (see above).
- The AP Stylebook is not freely available online; the AP mode applies its composition-title rule as summarized above.
Privacy
Everything happens in your browser. What you enter or open here is not uploaded or stored by MySmartCoPilot.
Frequently asked questions
What do I get without a pass?
Without a pass, Title Case Converter for Papers & Reference Lists (APA, MLA, Chicago, AP) shows the first words of the converted titles or reference list (up to 100), with the first changes explained (up to 10). Until you unlock it, the result can’t be downloaded or copied. A Pro or Premium pass, a one-time payment that never renews, unlocks the full result. The pricing page lists the passes and their prices.
Do I use title case or sentence case in APA 7?
Title case for the title of your paper, its headings and the titles of works you mention in your text; sentence case for the titles of articles, books, chapters, reports and web pages in your reference list. Journal names keep title case in the reference list.
Why does APA want sentence case when the article itself uses title case?
APA writes reference-list titles in sentence case whatever the original used, so that every entry looks the same. Keep the capitals of proper nouns and abbreviations, and of the first word after a colon.
Does MLA use sentence case in the works-cited list?
Not for English titles: MLA capitalizes them the same way in your text and in the works-cited list. Titles in some other languages follow those languages’ own capitalization.
What changed for titles in the 18th edition of Chicago?
Prepositions of five letters or more are now capitalized (About, Between, Through), shorter ones stay lower case, and what Chicago used to call headline style is now called title case.
Why did a name lose its capital?
In a title typed in title case every major word starts with a capital, so a name looks like any other word. Click the name in What changed and why to give it its capital back; the choice stays while you work on that title.
How is this different from the Title Capitalization Tool?
Both use the same engine, so they give the same title case word for word. The Title Capitalization Tool converts titles in six styles and compares them side by side; this page is for papers: it fixes whole reference lists, marks APA heading levels and adds APA’s sentence-case rules for reference titles, such as the capital of Experiment in Experiment 2.