Which words stay lowercase in a Portuguese title?

Articles (o, a, um, uma), prepositions (de, em, para, com, por, sem, sobre), their contractions (do, da, no, na, pelo, à), and conjunctions (e, ou, mas, que) stay lowercase when they fall in the middle of a title. They are still capitalised if they are the very first word.

Does it capitalise the word after a colon?

Yes. A colon, question mark, or exclamation mark starts a new clause, so the word immediately after one is forced to capitalise. This matches how subtitles are written, for example O Senhor dos Anéis: A Sociedade do Anel.

Why are proper nouns not always capitalised correctly?

The tool cannot know which words are names of people, places, or brands, so it capitalises every word that is not a small function word. That covers most proper nouns automatically, but you should review the output and lowercase or adjust anything that should differ, such as a brand written in lower case.

How are hyphenated and accented words handled?

Hyphenated compounds like guarda-chuva have each part capitalised unless the part is a small word. Accented letters are recognised, so título, ânimo, and órfão are capitalised on their accented first letter where appropriate, and existing accents are preserved.

Are acronyms preserved?

Yes. The tool only forces the first letter of a word to uppercase and leaves the remaining letters as typed, so fully uppercase acronyms such as ONU, EUA, and PDF are not lowercased.

Portuguese Title Case

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This tool formats Portuguese titles and headings using the standard editorial convention: capitalise the first word and the major words, but keep the small connecting words lowercase in the middle of the title. Portuguese capitalisation is closer to sentence case than English, so a naive capitalise-every-word approach looks wrong.

How it works

Each line is processed as a separate title. The tool splits it into words while keeping the spacing intact, then for each word it decides:

The first word of the title, and the first word after a :, ?, or !, is always capitalised.
A word in the curated small-word list (articles, prepositions, contractions, and conjunctions) stays lowercase when it sits mid-title.
Every other word is capitalised on its first letter, with the rest left as typed so acronyms survive.

Tips and example

Given o senhor dos anéis: a sociedade do anel, the tool produces O Senhor dos Anéis: A Sociedade do Anel — the leading o and the post-colon a are capitalised, while dos and do stay lowercase. Because proper nouns cannot be detected automatically, review the output for names and brands. The small-word list covers the most common function words; if your house style treats a particular preposition differently, adjust the result by hand after copying.