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Capitalization in Titles and Headings

Published on December 22, 2015 by Sarah Vinz. Revised on June 20, 2022. https://www.scribbr.com/academic-writing/capitalization-titles-headings/

There are three main options for capitalizing chapter and section headings within your dissertation: 1. capitalizing all significant words 2. capitalizing only the first word 3. a combination of the two

Option 1: All significant words capitalized

Chapter 3 Literature Review
Section 3.1 History of Coffee Drinking
Section 3.2 Emerging Coffee Markets in North America
Section 3.2.1 High School and College Students
Section 3.2.2 Commuting Workers
Section 3.3 Competitors in the Hot Beverage Sector
The list of what is considered significant is quite long; it generally includes all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs.

You may find it easier to instead focus on what usually isn’t considered significant (and thus not capitalized, unless it happens to be the first word in a heading): articles (a, an, the), prepositions (examples: by, for, in), conjunctions (examples: and, or, because).

Option 2: Only first words capitalized

Chapter 3 Literature review
Section 3.1 A history of coffee drinking
Section 3.2 Emerging coffee markets in North America
Section 3.2.1 High school and college students
Section 3.2.2 Commuting workers
Section 3.3 Competitors in the hot beverage sector

Finally, the third possibility is to use a combination of the other two options. For instance, you could use option 1 for the chapter headings and option 2 for lower level headings.

Option 3: Capitalization varies by level

Chapter 3 Literature Review (level 1)
Section 3.1 A history of coffee drinking (level 2)
Section 3.2 Emerging coffee markets in North America
Section 3.2.1 High school and college students (level 3)
Section 3.2.2 Commuting workers
Section 3.3 Competitors in the hot beverage sector

Capitalize proper nouns (names) no matter what

Formal names of people, organizations, and places are capitalized no matter what style you use. For instance, North America is capitalized throughout the above examples.