Is it becoming cool to not capitalize story titles?

May 31, 2010

capitalization

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

Screen Shot 2010 05 31 at 9.36.44 pm

Main Title: Sentence-caseSubtitle: N/A

New York Times

Screen Shot 2010 05 31 at 9.37.10 pm

Main Title: CapitalizedSubtitle: N/A

Salon

Screen Shot 2010 05 31 at 10.00.10 pm

Main Title: Sentence-caseSubtitle: Sentence-case

Huffington Post

Screen Shot 2010 05 31 at 10.08.04 pm

Main Title: CapitalizedSubtitle: N/A

The New Yorker

Screen Shot 2010 05 31 at 10.17.30 pm

Main Title: UppercaseSubtitle: Sentence-case

The Economist

Screen Shot 2010 05 31 at 9.37.47 pm

Main Title: Sentence-caseSubtitle: Sentence-case

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TechCrunch

Screen Shot 2010 05 31 at 10.20.48 pm

Main Title: CapitalizedSubtitle: N/A

Wall Street Journal

Screen Shot 2010 05 31 at 10.24.52 pm

Main Title: CapitalizedSubtitle: Capitalized

NPR

Screen Shot 2010 06 01 at 10.48.01 pm

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. ]

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