Richard JE Cooke
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Prefer sentence case to title case

28 March 2015

I always use sentence case in all text in my applications in preference to title case, which clients sometimes initally expect.

For example

This is a heading

rather than

This is a Heading

Why?

  1. It makes the English you use correct. It complies with the Oxford style guide - capitalise only where necessary (e.g. proper nouns and the start of a sentence).
  2. Sentence case is faster to read (because your visual system recognises entire word shapes in one glance).
  3. It looks modern, rather than old fashioned.
  4. It's friendly. It mimics your natural written conversational style.
  5. Title case is hard to define. Which is correct?
    • Title Case is Great for Print
    • Title Case Is Great For Print
  6. Where exactly do you use title case?  On headings and labels?  Well, what about emphasis text? What about one sentence paragraphs that look like headings?  It soon gets confusing and arbitrary capital letters start appearing all over the place.
  7. Sentence case complies with the ISO ergonomics standard for human computer interaction, ISO 9241.

Reasons you might want to use title case:

  1. You want your application to look old, traditional, or conservative.
  2. You want your application to look German (which uses capitals for common nouns).

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