all words and titles are capitalized

Question

I need To no this answer because I have a test coming up and I need to study

Answer 1

Do you mean "All words in titles are capitalized"? If so, then the "answer" to this, i.e., the truth or falsity of this statement, would be "false."

 

On a very nitpicking and literal level, to say that "all words . . . are capitalized" would mean that each letter of every word would be written as a capital letter, as opposed to a lower case letter, in other words IN ALL CAPS. Of course, in common usage we do talk about "capitalizing" a name or a title when we really mean just doing that to the first letters of the individual words. 

 

But beyond that, while it is true that most words in titles are "capitalized," there are exceptions. Here's a brief run-down of the general rules (and though these are standardized in most handbooks, there are some variations especially in actual practice):

• The first letter of the first and last word in a title are invariably "capitalized," i.e., their first letters must be written in upper case (a fancier term for a capital letter, as opposed to a "lower case" letter, which is sometimes even called a "small" or "little" letter, as in "Do you write that with a big C or a little c?", a question I get asked all the time about a part of my last name).
• Most other words in titles are "capitalized," except for
• indefinite and definite articles, i.e., a, an and the
• conjunctions like and, or and but
• smaller (i.e., two-, three- or sometimes four-letter) prepositions, e.g., in, at, for, over  (but note again that if one of these is the first or last word in a title, it is still "capitalized")
• longer prepositions, e.g., among and between, are sometimes not "capitalized," but they very often are even if they're not the first or last word in a title
• words that look like prepositions but in fact are used in combinations with verbs with special meanings (This is trickier, and as a result usage does vary, but what I'm talking about here are combinations like look out and give up which literally don't refer to anything "out" or "up" [which would be their prepositional meanings] but are idioms meaning 'be careful' and 'surrender', respectively. So a title like Look Out Below! would be "capitalized" like that, as opposed to one like Walking Slowly out the Front Door where out is clearly a preposition. Another example: Why I Gave Up and Went Home versus Voyages up the Nile, where up is also a preposition.)