Capitalized Case Converter

Capitalising every word by hand is tedious. Here the output updates as you type, so there is nothing to click except Copy.

1. Paste or type the text into the Input box. It can be a list of names, a heading, a product catalogue or several paragraphs. Paste and Clear sit above the box.
2. Read the result in the box labelled Capitalized Text. The first letter of every word is a capital and every other letter is lowercase.
3. Check names that need a capital inside the word, such as McDonald, and any word with an apostrophe (see below).
4. Press Copy, Download .txt or Use as input to carry on.

For example, the quick BROWN fox becomes The Quick Brown Fox, and 12 high street, new-town (north) becomes 12 High Street, New-Town (North). Nothing is uploaded, so customer lists and staff names can be tidied without leaving your computer.

Capitalized case is also called start case or proper case. The converter lowercases the whole text first, which clears out caps lock damage, and then capitalises a letter when it comes at the very start or right after one of these characters:

• a space, tab or line break;
• a hyphen, so mary-jane becomes Mary-Jane;
• an opening bracket, such as ( or [;
• a double quotation mark or an apostrophe.

Every word is treated the same way, so small words such as of, and and the also get capitals. A digit is not a boundary, so 3rd place stays 3rd Place. Only Latin letters, accented ones included, are changed; Greek and Cyrillic words stay lowercase.

The apostrophe rule has a side effect. Contractions come out as Don'T and It'S, a quirk shared with the spreadsheet PROPER function. A name like o'neil comes out right as O'Neil only by coincidence. Correct contractions by hand.

The three styles are easy to confuse, so here is the same phrase in each.

Choose capitalized case when every word carries equal weight or when a style guide asks for it. For headlines, where short words stay small, the title case converter is the better fit, and for ordinary prose use the sentence case converter.

• Name and address lists. Exports often arrive in capitals or lowercase. Convert, then fix names with an internal capital, such as McDonald, which becomes Mcdonald, and acronyms, because NASA becomes Nasa.
• Product and category data. Spreadsheet columns of cities, brands and tags can be standardised in one pass.
• Camel-case hashtags. #LikeThisOne is easier to read, and screen readers can pronounce it word by word. Capitalise the phrase here, then tick Remove ALL spaces in the whitespace remover to join the words.
• Sorted lists. After tidying names, the alphabetical order tool puts them in sequence.

In Word the same effect is Change Case, then Capitalize Each Word. In Excel and Google Sheets it is the PROPER function. Both give a result close to this page, though PROPER also capitalises letters that follow a digit, so 3rd becomes 3Rd there. To undo the change, the lower case converter restores plain lowercase.

Be careful with names. Particles that are normally written small, such as the van in Ludwig van Beethoven, the de in Charles de Gaulle or the al- in many Arabic names, receive a capital because the tool treats all words alike. Mac and Mc surnames, such as MacDonald, lose their inner capital too. For a person list, convert first and then correct the exceptions by hand, which is still quicker than typing each name again.