Poor Headline Capitalization: A Major Tell

If there’s one thing that can tell me, in a single glance, that a news article was not edited by an experienced pro, it’s the headline capitalization.

Here’s an example from a Yahoo Finance headline I saw a while back:

Stocks Pull Back: Why it Might Not Last

One look at that headline and I know that someone in the organization doesn’t know what he or she is doing. The reason: the lowercase I in “it.”

A lot of editing styles capitalize the first letter of most words in a headline, but they make exceptions for some prepositions, articles, and conjunctions – especially short ones of three or fewer letters – unless they come at the beginning or end of the headline.

“Simpson Back in Jail” – Here, the word “in” is lowercase because it’s a short preposition that doesn’t happen to be the first or last word. But if "in" were first or last word, the "i" would be capitalized: “In Jails, Healthcare Suffers” or in “Sheen Decries the Mess He’s In.” (Not great headlines, I know. They’re just for illustration.)

Now, these capitalization rules aren’t a matter of right and wrong. This is a style thing. But when you’re making a clear effort to follow this style, you don’t want the world to see that you don’t know how.

In the case of our Yahoo headline, the editor was probably used to seeing “Simpson Back in Jail” and gave “it” the same treatment as “in.” That was a mistake.

"In" is a preposition. "It" is a pronoun.

I see the same mistake with “is.” Just because it’s a two-letter word starting with I doesn’t mean it should be treated like “in.” "Is" is a verb.

Some online publications just skirt the whole issue by capitalizing every single letter, including all the prepositions, articles and conjunctions: “Simpson In Jail And Out Of The Way.” At least in this style you don’t have to test your editors’ knowledge of prepositions, conjunctions and articles. But it sure looks ugly.

The best course is just to learn the basic parts of speech before you publish.

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