According to APA rules an article title should be formatted in sentence case, which means only capitalise the first letter of the title and the subtitle, and any proper nouns. Proper nouns include personal names, place names, names of companies and organisations. Use lowercase for everything else.

APA tells us not to capitalise the names of diseases, disorders, therapies, treatments, theories, concepts, hypotheses, principles, models, and statistical procedures. For example:

Correct citation:

Corrigan, F., Fisher, J., & Nutt, D. (2011). Autonomic dysregulation and the window of tolerance model of the effects of complex emotional trauma. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 25(1), 17–25. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269881109354930

Incorrect citation:

Corrigan, F., Fisher, J., & Nutt, D. (2011). Autonomic dysregulation and the Window of Tolerance Model of the effects of complex emotional trauma. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 25(1), 17–25. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269881109354930

Capitalise personal names that appear in the title:

Sacco, R. (2016). The Fibonacci life‐chart method (FLCM) as a foundation for Carl Jung’s theory of synchronicity. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 61(2), 203–222. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5922.12204

More information and examples can be found in the link below.

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Comments (1)

  1. Good for a personal name, but what about a university's name?Brooks, E., Brant, J., & Lamb, M. (2019). How can universities cultivate leaders of character? Insights from a leadership and character development program at the University of Oxford. International Journal of Ethics Education, 4(2), 167–182. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40889-019-00075-x Besides italicisation and indentation, which I don't know how to do in this question box, is that OK? Library response: Yes, that looks correct Ian. I have added a definition of proper nouns in the text above.
    by Ian Gillis on Apr 02, 2025