You’ve just hit upon a great point. That is a rule I try to live by even in my blog post titles, though less strictly so than in my argumentative headings in briefs. And I will confess that sometimes, i intentionally violate the rule to give the heading or title a better “look.” (Which certainly isn’t the case with the title of his piece — nothing sticks out more than a capitalized “A” in a title. I wonder if he cringed when he saw it in print.)

One rule I’ve run across is that prepositions of 5 or more letters should be capitalized. That rule is from the California Style Manual, “A Handbook of Legal Style for California Courts and Lawyers,” according to its subtitle, and the generally accepted authority in this state for writing submitted to the courts.

The CSM also says that words following a hyphen should not be capitalized. Thus, accordin to the CSM, the title of this post should be “Low-tech Proofreading” instead of “Low-Tech Proofreading.” I’ll admit that rule is one I regularly and intentionally disregard, as I did in the title of this post, because I think the lower case looks so out of place that it is a distraction.

Thoughts?