Convert a string to title case in Python

Title case means every word starts with a capital letter: "The Quick Brown Fox". The string method title() does this in one call.

The program

text = "the quick brown fox"
print(text.title())

The Quick Brown Fox

How it works

• title() makes the first letter of each word a capital and every other letter small.
• It gives back a new string. text itself does not change, because strings cannot be changed in place.

The apostrophe problem

title() decides where a word starts in a simple way: any letter that comes after a character that is not a letter starts a new word. An apostrophe is not a letter, so the letter after it becomes a capital too:

text = "they're reading ada's notes"
print(text.title())

They'Re Reading Ada'S Notes

capwords() from the string module splits the text on spaces, capitalises each word, and joins them again. The apostrophes no longer cause a problem:

import string

text = "they're reading ada's notes"
print(string.capwords(text))

They're Reading Ada's Notes

Both functions make all the other letters small, so "NASA" becomes "Nasa". To keep the rest of each word as it is, see capitalise the first letter of each word.