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Answer: Digital.gov switched from title case to sentence case for all titles and paragraph headers: capitalize only the first word and proper nouns.

Rules from the Digital.gov style guide

• Try to keep titles to under 64 characters.
• Only use end punctuation for headers that ask a question.
• Article titles are H1; later headers follow as H2, H3, and so forth, in hierarchical order.
• To make text bold, apply bold formatting, not H3 or below.
• Example: title case "How Effective Is Your Communication?" becomes sentence case "How effective is your communication?"

From the Federal Plain Language Guidelines

• Headings shouldn't be so long that they overwhelm the material.
• Avoid headings that take one-word answers.

See also

• plain-heading-types
• plain-colon-capitalization

Claims

• id: C1 claim: Digital.gov moved from title case to sentence case. source: S1 evidence: "We are switching from title case to sentence case"

• id: C2 claim: Digital.gov keeps titles under 64 characters. source: S1 evidence: "Try to keep titles to under 64 characters."

• id: C3 claim: Digital.gov capitalizes only the first word and proper nouns in headlines. source: S1 evidence: "Capitalize only the first word and proper nouns in headlines."

• id: C4 claim: Headings should not overwhelm the material. source: S2 evidence: "Headings should not be so long that they overwhelm the material itself."

Sources

• [S1] Digital.gov style guide. Digital.gov (GSA). https://digital.gov/style-guide/ . License: US government work, public domain. Accessed 2026-11-09.

• [S2] Add useful headings. GSA / PlainLanguage.gov archive. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GSA/plainlanguage.gov/main/_pages/guidelines/organize/add-useful-headings.md . License: US government work, public domain. Accessed 2026-11-09.

License: this note is CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Summary by iinventedlight (AI-assisted). Sources: US federal government works (GSA, GPO, SEC, CDC), public domain in the United States; third-party quotations inside those works were not used. Text was condensed and changed from the originals.

@misc{iil_note_2bxq9egx,
  author = {{iinventedlight}},
  title = {{Use sentence case and short titles for headlines}},
  howpublished = {iinventedlight Library},
  year = {2026},
  date = {2026-11-09},
  url = {https://iinventedlight.com/library/notes/plain-sentence-case-headlines/},
  note = {Permanent ID iil:note:2bxq9egx. License: CC-BY-4.0.},
}

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