Capitalisation of Titles on home page

[jenniferlin15]

The capitalisation of titles is really inconsistent throughout the entire site. We have examples such as:

• Find Specific Articles
• Publication date
• Explore sample reports
• Search all Articles
• Upload File
• Funder name or funding number
• Top Tweets
• Most bookmarked
• Edit List

Wow.. it's all over the place. We need to standardize capitalisation across the board. Most of the titles have all words capitalised and for simplicity sake, let's just go with that.

[jure]

So "Funder Name Or Funding Number"? or "Funder Name or Funding Number"?

[jenniferlin15]

Funder Name or Funding Number

[let's not capitalise prepositions: and, or, the, a, etc. that said, "all" is not a preposition - i looked this up.]

[jure]

TL;DR: The consensus is that title-style capitalization is used for titles, and sentence-style for all other UI elements.

I've never thought of this aspect, so I'm trying to find some best practices when it comes to UI text capitalization.

One really good example is the comprehensive Microsoft style guide: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn742478.aspx

This is what it says about capitalization of UI text:

Capitalization

Use title-style capitalization for titles, sentence-style capitalization for all other UI elements. Doing so is more appropriate for the Windows tone.
Exception: For legacy applications, you may use title-style capitalization for command buttons, menus, and column headings if necessary to avoid mixing capitalization styles.

Some more references here: http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/28172/what-are-some-reference-works-for-capitalization-in-ui-text

As far as capitalization itself is concerned, these rules cover it:

Title-Style Capitalization

Capitalize every word except the following:

• Articles ("a," "an," and "the")
• Coordinating conjunctions ("and," "but," "for," "nor," and "or")
• Prepositions of four or fewer letters ("with", "of," and "for")
• The word "to" in an infinitive phrase (for example, "How to Set Up Your Computer")
• Case-sensitive programming terms and object names (for example, "A fancy cluster")
• Always capitalize the first and last words, regardless of their parts of speech (for example, "The Text to Look For").

Sentence-Style Capitalization

• Always capitalize the first word of a new sentence. Proper nouns and capitalized object names maintain their usual capitalization. Rewrite sentences that start with a case-sensitive lowercase word, such as an object name.
• Do not capitalize the word following a colon unless the word is a proper noun, or the text following the colon or dash is a complete sentence.

[jure]

Google seems to be even more on the lower-case side of things: https://www.google.com/advanced_search

Not a big fan of this, I think that Microsoft's approach looks cleaner.

[jenniferlin15]

I'm fine going with either, just want consistency. The current rendering is mostly all caps across titles and UX elements. I say mostly since it's not equally applied, hence the ticket. If you'd like to move to Microsoft approach, that works for me but we'll have to do a global audit.