September 2002 Online Poll Results and Comments
| What type of capitalization style do you use in headings? | |
| I use initial capitalization, where I capitalize all words (e.g., Upcoming Seminars Hosted By The Technical Editing Society). (13) | 4% |
| I use sentence case, where I capitalize the first word and subsequent proper nouns (e.g., Upcoming seminars hosted by the Technical Editing Society). (56) | 18% |
| I use title case, where I capitalize all words, except for articles, prepositions, and conjunctions that are three letters or shorter (e.g., Upcoming Seminars Hosted by the Technical Editing Society). (237) | 77% |
| I use another capitalization style. (1) | 0% |
| Total votes: 307 |
Voter Comments
Note: These comments are taken verbatim from voter submissions.
- I’m always arguing with engineers about their habit of capitalizing practically all proper nouns, so I couldn’t support the sentence case method. Plus we use CMOS, which makes sense to me.
- Note: “To” is not always a preposition. Sometimes it is part of a verb. Then it is capitalized.
- I use a combination of sentence case and title case, which is why I had to vote for “other”.
- This is my company’s style. I prefer to Capitalize the first letter in the initial word only–rest is lowercase
- For major headings we use title format. For little paragraph heads, we use sentence case.
- Writing is not just proper syntax and sentence structure. It is a visual experience. The title, as well as the body should mirror a visually soothing yet enticing document.
- I prefer the informality of sentence case for most headings, and use font and size, rather than lots of capitals, to make headings stand out.
- While I bow to convention and use lowercase for prepositions, articles, and conjunctions of three letters or less, I think it’s an inconsistent convention, and would prefer to see all words capitalized.
- At QNX, we use the title case for chapter names, and sentence case for sections within a chapter.
- Headings/Headlines should always use initial capitalization as a courtesy to the reader. It’s just plain easier to read, and isn’t that one of the points of a heading
- We use both sentence case (headings within a chapter) and title case (Book and Chapter titles).
- The cap style depends on the heading level. First-level headings are all centered and all caps. Second-level headings are flush left and all caps. Third- and fourth-level headings are title case.
- I use title case and a different font for each level
- Less is more.
- With object oriented writing and assembly, we also use acronyms in all headlines. No expansions (spell-outs) generally.
- Sentence caps save time for writers and editors. We use the font to emphasize heads.
- This helps it to stand out and just looks good.
