Sentence case

A way of capitalizing a title in which only the first word, the first word after a colon and proper nouns start with a capital letter.

In sentence case a title is capitalized like an ordinary sentence. The first word, the first word of a subtitle (the word after a colon) and proper nouns get a capital. Every other word is lowercase.

Sleep timing and exam performance in first-year students

Learning from failure in group projects: A study of Norwegian universities

Where APA uses it. In an APA 7 reference list, the titles of articles, chapters, books and reports are written in sentence case, whatever capitals the publisher used. Book and report titles are italic. Article and chapter titles are not italic and have no quotation marks. In the running text of your paper, titles use title case instead.

Why generated citations need a check. Databases usually store titles the way publishers print them, often in title case. PaperCitation’s generator offers to convert a title to sentence case for APA. Look at proper nouns afterwards, because a program can’t always tell a name from an ordinary word.