AP style capitalizes every word of four letters or more in a title, plus all major words at any length, plus the first and last word. Everything else – short articles, short conjunctions, short prepositions – stays lowercase. Job titles follow a separate rule that has nothing to do with length: capitalize a formal title only when it sits directly before a name.
The AP title case converter applies the four-letter rule and the AP exceptions above, and shows which words it changed.
The 4-Letter Rule
The threshold is what makes AP distinctive. Four letters is the line, and it applies to prepositions and conjunctions alike – a word does not get a pass for being a "minor" part of speech if it is long enough.
| Word | AP | APA | Chicago | MLA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| in (2 letters) | Lowercase | Lowercase | Lowercase | Lowercase |
| for (3 letters) | Lowercase | Lowercase | Lowercase | Lowercase |
| with (4 letters) | Capitalize | Capitalize | Lowercase | Lowercase |
| over (4 letters) | Capitalize | Capitalize | Lowercase | Lowercase |
| into (4 letters) | Capitalize | Capitalize | Lowercase | Lowercase |
| after (5 letters) | Capitalize | Capitalize | Capitalize | Lowercase |
| through (7 letters) | Capitalize | Capitalize | Capitalize | Lowercase |
The classic illustration is Gone With the Wind. AP capitalizes "With" at four letters but leaves "the" lowercase at three. Chicago and MLA both write Gone with the Wind, which is why the same film title appears two ways across publications.
Job Titles and Honorifics
This is the AP rule most often broken in press releases and company blogs. Position, not importance, decides the case.
| Correct | Incorrect | Why |
|---|---|---|
| President Lincoln signed the order | president Lincoln signed the order | Formal title directly before a name |
| Abraham Lincoln, the president, signed | Abraham Lincoln, the President, signed | Title follows the name |
| The mayor announced the plan | The Mayor announced the plan | No name attached |
| astronaut Mae Jemison | Astronaut Mae Jemison | Occupational description, not a formal title |
| Chief Executive Officer Ana Ruiz | chief executive officer Ana Ruiz | Formal corporate title before the name |
AP also prefers to move long titles after the name rather than stacking them in front: Ana Ruiz, chief executive officer of Northwind, reads better than the capitalized version and sidesteps the question entirely.
Two adjacent questions have their own pages: Is "President" Capitalized? and Is "Professor" Capitalized?.
Headlines: Sentence Case or Title Case?
AP's own guidance for news headlines is sentence case – capitalize the first word and proper nouns, nothing else. Wire copy and most newspapers follow it.
In practice, a large share of organizations that say "we use AP style" apply AP title case to headlines and article titles, because it reads as more formal in a marketing context. Both are defensible. What is not defensible is switching between them within one publication.
| Approach | Example | Common in |
|---|---|---|
| AP sentence case | City council approves transit funding | Newspapers, wire copy |
| AP title case | City Council Approves Transit Funding | Marketing, blogs, internal style sheets |
If you need to check a batch for consistency, the batch headline checker runs a whole list against one style and flags the lines that disagree with it. The difference between the two is covered in more depth in Title Case vs Sentence Case.
Composition Titles
AP departs from academic guides here: quotation marks instead of italics, applied to books, films, songs, albums, plays, and television programs.
- the novel "Beloved" – quotation marks, title case inside them
- the film "Gone With the Wind" – "With" capitalized at four letters
- the album "Rumours" – same treatment as books and films
- the Bible, Webster's New World College Dictionary – no quotation marks for scripture and reference works
Software, apps, and websites are not composition titles in AP and take no quotation marks: Photoshop, Slack, Wikipedia.
Quick Reference
- Capitalize words of four letters or more, regardless of part of speech.
- Capitalize all nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and pronouns at any length – including Is, Be, and It.
- Capitalize the first and last word no matter what.
- Lowercase a, an, the, and short conjunctions and prepositions in middle positions.
- Capitalize a formal job title only directly before a name.
- Put composition titles in quotation marks, not italics.
The capitalization rules guide holds the full AP rule set with side-by-side comparisons against the other three guides.
Frequently Asked Questions
Run a headline through the free Title Case Converter with AP selected. It applies the 4-letter rule and marks every word it changed, so you can check the call rather than trust it.
Open the converter with a prefilled example and adapt it to your headline.
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About Nadia Ross
Brings AP style expertise from newsroom and digital media workflows to practical capitalization guidance.
