Journal articles, title capitalization

The ACS Style Guide recommends title case for journal article titles (i.e., capitalizing the first letters of all major words), but the ACS journals examined use sentence case (i.e., capitalizing only the first letter of the first word and proper nouns). 

Article titles are not essential in reference citations, but they are considered desirable to highlight the contents of a paper and facilitate location in reference libraries. Some ACS publications include the article title in journal references, and some do not check the publication itself. Article titles are set in roman type without quotation marks and end with a period (or a question mark if that is part of the title). In ACS journals, capitalization follows that of the original publication in other publications, the main words are capitalized. 

Remember, too, when you type your paper, the titles of books and journals should be underlined even though you may see them printed in books or magazines in italics. The titles of articles, essays, and chapters should be enclosed in quotation marks. All important words in titles are capitalized. 

Remember that in APA style, you underline books, journals, volume numbers, and their associated punctuation, but you do not put the names of articles in quotation marks. Although you do capitalize the major words in the titles of magazines, newspapers, and journals, you do not capitalize any words in the titles of books or articles except the first word in each title, the first word following a colon, and all proper names. 

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