Is it becoming cool to not capitalize story titles?

While reading certain publications recently I’ve been paying a bit more attention to the typography and capitalization. The main thing I’ve been noticing is that some publications are doing their story titles–or at least part of them–in lowercase rather than capitalizing each word.

So I made a quick mental list of a few prominent magazines, newspapers, and blogs and went to visit them.

• CNN

• NYT

• Salon

• Huffington Post

• New Yorker

• Economist

• TechCrunch

• WSJ

• NPR

Here are the results:

CNN

Main Title: Sentence-caseSubtitle: N/A

New York Times

Main Title: CapitalizedSubtitle: N/A

Salon

Main Title: Sentence-caseSubtitle: Sentence-case

Huffington Post

Main Title: CapitalizedSubtitle: N/A

The New Yorker

Main Title: UppercaseSubtitle: Sentence-case

The Economist

Main Title: Sentence-caseSubtitle: Sentence-case

TechCrunch

Main Title: CapitalizedSubtitle: N/A

Wall Street Journal

Main Title: CapitalizedSubtitle: Capitalized

NPR

Main Title: CapitalizedSubtitle: Sentence-case

Summary

1. Most still capitalize the primary title, but CNN, The Economist, and Salon use lowercase for even that portion

2. It is significantly more common to see lowercase in the subtitle (if one is used)

[ Put any suggestions for other big sites to poll in the comments, and I’ll add them to the list. ]

::