How to Capitalize Titles in APA Style
The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA Style) is widely used in academic writing, especially in the social and behavioral sciences. The guide includes instructions for writing and formatting essays and for presenting citations and references.
As a proofreader, you need to know how to correct an essay according to APA Style, for example, by following the guidelines for punctuation or APA essay formatting. You might be asked to apply all APA rules to a text or just the referencing system rules. You will also need to make sure that titles are correctly formatted for different works (e.g., books, articles, or journals).
In this post, we’ll examine how APA Style says to format titles of works and offer advice for proofreaders and writers on:
- Where APA style requires title case and sentence case capitalization
- How APA style formats titles of works in different parts of a text
Read on for more on titles in APA Style!
Types of Capitalization in APA Style
In academic writing, authors often need to mention the titles of books, essays, periodicals, and other works. This could be to discuss them directly (e.g., in a paper analyzing another thinker’s work). Or it could be to mention them in the reference list.
When formatting titles, APA Style uses two types of capitalization – title case and sentence case – and the type to use depends on whether the title appears in the main body of the text or in the reference list.
Title Case Capitalization in APA Style
Title case is used for titles of works appearing in the main text of a document and for the titles of journals in the reference list. Additionally, it’s used for the title of the academic paper or essay itself and all section titles, subheadings, table titles, and figure titles in the text.
Using title case capitalization means capitalizing the first letters of:
- The first word of the title and subtitle
- All major words (i.e., nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs), including the second part of hyphenated words (e.g., Self-Esteem)
- All words of four or more letters, including conjunctions and prepositions (e.g., Between and From)
- Any proper nouns
Here are two examples of title case capitalization:
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales
Gussie’s Suitcase Packed with Courage, Hope and Secrets: A Young Girl’s Journey From Latvia to America
Sentence Case Capitalization in APA Style
Sentence case is used for titles of works – except titles of journals – in the reference list. It’s also used for table column headings.
Using sentence case capitalization means capitalizing only:
- The first word in titles, subtitles, and headings
- Any proper nouns
Here are the same titles mentioned above, but this time in sentence case:
The man who mistook his wife for a hat: And other clinical tales
Gussie’s suitcase packed with courage, hope and secrets: A young girl’s journey from Latvia to America
The same title can, therefore, be capitalized differently in different places. As a proofreader, you will need to check that your client has used the right capitalization style in the right places.
Formatting Titles in APA Style
APA Style also uses multiple formats to present the titles of works: italics, quotation marks, and roman type (i.e., a standard, non-italic typeface). The correct choice depends on the type of work and where the title appears in the text:
- Italics – APA Style uses italics for the titles of standalone works (e.g., books, journals, newspapers, and television series) in both the main text and in the reference list.
- Quotation marks – For shorter works that are part of a whole (e.g., book chapters, articles from journals or magazines, and episodes from a television show), APA Style places titles within quotation marks in the main text only.
- Roman type – In an APA reference list, titles of shorter works should be given in roman type (i.e., without italics) and without quotation marks or other additional punctuation. The same applies for the name of a series of books or films when mentioned in the main text of a document (e.g., the Star Wars movies).
The tricky ones here are shorter works or works that are part of a larger work, since their formatting varies depending on where they are used (i.e., they are given in quotation marks in the main text but without quotation marks in the reference list).
When proofreading, if you’re not sure what format a title requires (e.g., if it’s not clear from the text if the title mentioned is a book or an article, and there is no reference list), you can look it up online; however, it’s usually safer to leave a comment asking your client to check.
Examples of Titles in APA Style
To show you how the above would look in practice, let’s look at some examples.
When the title of a standalone work, such as a book, is mentioned in the main text of a document, a correctly formatted title using APA Style would be presented in title case capitalization and italics like this:
We see this in A. E. Housman’s (2006) The Name and Nature of Poetry.
In The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales, Oliver Sacks (1998) describes the unique perceptual experiences of people with neurological disorders.
Young readers can develop an understanding of the experience of immigrating in Gussie’s Suitcase Packed with Courage, Hope and Secrets: A Young Girl’s Journey From Latvia to America (Rothman, 2025), which is based on a true story.
In contrast, the title of a book in an APA Style reference list would still be in italics but would use sentence case:
Housman, A. E. (2006). The name and nature of poetry. The Housman Society. (Original work published 1933)
Sacks, O. (1998). The man who mistook his wife for a hat: And other clinical tales. Touchstone.
Rothman, T. B. (2025). Gussie’s suitcase packed with courage, hope and secrets: A young girl’s journey from Latvia to America. [Self-published]
Although the titles of most standalone works in the reference list are given in sentence case, this is not so with journal titles – journal titles are presented in title case capitalization in the reference list. You will see this later when we give an example of a reference list entry for a journal article.
For a work that is part of a larger whole (such as a journal article, book chapter, or TV episode), APA Style formatting differs between the main text and the reference list. In the main text, the title should be presented in title case capitalization and within quotation marks:
Adam M. Croom (2015) suggests poetry therapy as a treatment for a variety of ailments in his article “The Practice of Poetry and the Psychology of Well-Being.”
But in the reference list, the name of a journal article in APA Style is presented in sentence case and without italics. In contrast, the name of the journal, which is the larger work and also referred to as the container volume, is presented in title case and in italics:
Croom, A. M. (2015). The practice of poetry and the psychology of well-being. Journal of Poetry Therapy, 28(1), 21–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/08893675.2015.980133
Another type of standalone work is a composite work, such as an edited collection of essays. When referring to one chapter or essay in an edited book, the mention in this smaller work would look like this in the main text:
In the short story “The Ghost Village,” Straub (1992) builds a fantasy world.
But when including a chapter in an edited book in an APA Style reference list, the quotation marks are dropped, and the title is given in sentence case capitalization. So the entry in the reference list would look like this:
Straub, P. (1992). The ghost village. In D. Etchison (Ed.), Metahorror (pp. 370–377). Dell Publishing.
If you see titles that don’t follow these guidelines and your client has asked you to use APA style while proofreading, either make a correction or leave a comment as appropriate.
Becoming A Proofreader
If you want to learn more about style guides and academic writing so you can work as a freelance proofreader and editor, Becoming A Proofreader contains a whole module on working with academic writing and a module on proofreading citations and references. With plenty of examples, quizzes, and exercises, you can learn how to approach this kind of content so you’re prepared to take on academic work. You can even try two free lessons right now!
Your email address will not be published.