Is By Capitalized in a Title?

Capitalizing the word by correctly in a title is not as easy as it might look, since that depends on the grammatical function in which it is used: preposition or adverb. The position of by in the title and the title case style used also play a role. All cases are discussed in the following.

Let’s start with an easy case: By is not capitalized when it is used as a preposition. In such a case, it is followed by a noun, noun phrase, or pronoun, which is also called the object of the preposition. In the following examples, the object is underlined:

Sometimes, the order is reversed, and the object comes before the preposition:

In contrast, by must be capitalized when it is an adverb. This is the case when it is used in a particle verb, for example, “stop by”, “drop by,” or “get by”:

Note that there is no noun or noun phrase following by in these examples.

Something to keep in mind is that several verbs can be followed by the preposition by or the adverb by. Compare:

The position of by in a title can also be relevant. A trivial case is the use of by as the first word. In that position it is always capitalized:

Not quite so trivial is the use of by as the last word. Only some title case styles (AP, Chicago, MLA, New York Times, and Wikipedia) always capitalize the last word of a title:

AMA, APA, and Bluebook style however do not have such a rule, which means the preposition by is not capitalized in these styles when it occurs as the last word:

If you’re unsure how to capitalize a title correctly, you can simply use the Title Case Converter, which will do that for you.