Capitalize each word, O'Brien and McDonald included

Because they capitalise the first letter after every word boundary, and an apostrophe counts as a word boundary. It is the single most recognisable bug in this category of tool, and it hits every contraction in your text at once: don't, it's, we'll, they're. This page raises the letter after an apostrophe only when what comes before it is a lone O, D or L, which covers O'Brien, D'Angelo and L'Amour and leaves every contraction alone.

Switch on the name rules: Mc is applied to anything, and Mac is applied from a list of 22 surnames. The asymmetry is deliberate. Almost no English word starts with mc, so raising the letter after it is safe, but plenty start with mac — machine, machinery, macaroni, Macedonia — and a blanket rule would produce MacHine. The list covers MacDonald, MacGregor, MacKenzie, MacLeod, MacPherson and seventeen more; anything outside it gets a single front capital, which you can correct by hand.

They stay in small letters when they sit between the given name and the surname, so you get Vincent van Gogh, Leonardo da Vinci and Ludwig von Trapp rather than Van, Da and Von. Eighteen particles are recognised. They are capitalised when they open or close the line, which is why a surname-first list gives Van Gogh, Vincent and a lone Van Halen keeps its capital — one more reason to paste one name per line rather than a paragraph of them.

No, and the difference is the whole reason both pages exist. Capitalising each word raises everything, so the lord of the rings becomes The Lord Of The Rings. Title case holds the small linking words down and gives The Lord of the Rings, which is how a book, a headline or an essay title is written. Names, menu items, column headers and form labels want the blunt version; anything that reads as a sentence wants title case.

Turn the name rules on and any word with a capital inside it is left exactly as typed. That covers iPhone, eBay, LinkedIn, PhD, YouTube and a McDonald already spelled correctly. The first two settings do not protect them — they will give you Iphone and Ebay — because a great many pasted lists genuinely do want every interior capital flattened. Words written entirely in capitals are the exception and are always recased, since a list pasted in capitals would otherwise pass through untouched.

Yes — use the first setting, which brings the rest of each word down as well as raising the front letter, and JOHN MCDONALD becomes John McDonald once the name rules are on. This is the commonest real job on this page, because databases and order systems have been storing names in capitals for forty years. The one thing to check afterwards is initials: a middle initial survives, but a real set of initials inside a shouted list looks exactly like any other word in capitals, so IBM arrives as Ibm.

A Roman numeral at the end of a line is written in capitals, so henry viii comes back as Henry VIII and louis xiv as Louis XIV. Nine numerals are recognised — II, III, IV, VI, VII, VIII, IX, XI and XII — and only in final position, so the word six spelled vi inside a line is not disturbed. Jr and Sr are ordinary words to this tool and simply get their front capital.