Daniel Miessler

Is it becoming cool to not capitalize story titles?

May 26, 2023

Is it becoming cool to not capitalize story titles? ​

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-case
Subtitle: N/A

New York Times ​

Screen Shot 2010 05 31 at 9.37.10 pm

Main Title: Capitalized
Subtitle: N/A

Salon ​

Screen Shot 2010 05 31 at 10.00.10 pm

Main Title: Sentence-case
Subtitle: Sentence-case

Huffington Post ​

Screen Shot 2010 05 31 at 10.08.04 pm

Main Title: Capitalized
Subtitle: N/A

The New Yorker ​

Screen Shot 2010 05 31 at 10.17.30 pm

Main Title: Uppercase
Subtitle: Sentence-case

The Economist ​

Screen Shot 2010 05 31 at 9.37.47 pm

Main Title: Sentence-case
Subtitle: Sentence-case

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TechCrunch ​

Screen Shot 2010 05 31 at 10.20.48 pm

Main Title: Capitalized
Subtitle: N/A

Wall Street Journal ​

Screen Shot 2010 05 31 at 10.24.52 pm

Main Title: Capitalized
Subtitle: Capitalized

NPR ​

Screen Shot 2010 06 01 at 10.48.01 pm

Main Title: Capitalized
Subtitle: 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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