Recently I co-wrote a grant: I was hired by an environmental non-profit to write their part of a grant request, while another writer was working on another non-profit’s part of the grant. When I got the other writer’s part of the grant to review, one of the first things I noticed was how different our headlines and titles were. We didn’t have competing tones or topics. The difference was a style issue: We capitalized different words in the titles.
Now, you may say, who cares? But in this case it mattered a lot. Glaring inconsistencies simply make you look unprofessional–which may affect whether you get the grant. Instead of just accepting her way or my way, we decided to go to an official source for guidance, the “APA Style Book.”
According to the guide, in general, “capitalize an article or a word of fewer than four letters if it is the first or last word in a title.” Also, pronouns of any length are capitalized. Otherwise, a word with fewer than four letters is not capitalized. As an example, here are a few of the titles that we settled on:
- How it Will go Beyond “Compliance and Mitigation” and how it Will Benefit the Bay
- Description of the Specific Activities That the Proposed Grant Will Fund, Including the Timeline
- Description of any Partnerships to Complete the Project
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May 28th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
[...] I have done in the past, I headed over to my “APA Style Book” and looked it up. Here’s what [...]
June 2nd, 2009 at 10:41 pm
da best. Keep it going! Thank you
June 5th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
[...] By the way, if you want to read about a similar dilemma — Deciding Whether to Capitalize “How” in a Title — see my past post. [...]