capitalization - Capital letters in headlines



I’m not a native English speaker. I’ve noticed that in titles or headlines, many words often start with a capital letter while others are still lowercase. As an example, the title of my question would most likely be:



Capital Letters in Headlines



I already found a solution on how it’s done, but I still want to know why.



Answer



According to Wikipedia, this phenomenon is called title case, and:



Among U.S. book publishers (but not newspaper publishers), it is a common typographic practice to capitalize "important" words in titles and headings. This is an old form of emphasis, similar to the more modern practice of using a larger or boldface font for titles.



So, basically, it's done for emphasis.


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