http://www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/capital_letters_title...
So, "a" and "the" are not capitalized because they are articles. But what about "on"? That's a preposition, isn't it? And according to this (and most) style guides you don't capitalize prepositions.
But in this title, "on" is not being used as a preposition. It's part of a compound verb, "catching on". Verbs are capitalized, so both those words are capitalized. Another good clue here is that "on" is the last word in the title, so it's not likely to be a preposition ("pre-position").
There is a subtlety here: "catch on" or "catching on" is often a compound verb meaning "becoming popular", but in a different context, it may be a simple verb and preposition. Consider these two headlines:
Sticky Notes are Catching On (becoming popular, "catching on" is a compound verb so both words capitalized)
Sticky Notes are Catching on Tables (getting stuck to tables, "catching" is a simple verb and "on" is a preposition, so "on" is not capitalized)
There's no "correct" outcome for an all-caps title, it's a stylistic choice. Neither right nor wrong. Another example of a stylistic choice is The Register's oft-exercised habit of emphasizing! a! title! like! this!.
> where can I read up on how you'd decide whether to hit shift or not - hoping that it isn't arbitrary.
Sorry, you can't read a rule on this practice, Because It Is Entirely Arbitrary.
Don't say that.
Since most newspapers and magazines are struggling to survive, maybe they don't do it any more, but for decades they made all their publications conform to style guides which were often as lengthy as books. Other organizations and communities of writers also used style guides. Three famous style guides:
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dictionary_of_Modern_English_... a.k.a. Fowler's; and
(2) A Chicago Manual of style (which might have been limited mainly to academic writing; do not remember); and
(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style a.k.a. Strunk and White.
Also the New York Times maintained their own style guide, which I seem to recall was also sold to the general public. The whole point of these guides was to make written English more consistent.
As to the specific question of capitalization style, there is one very dominant style: namely, articles ("the", "a" and "an"), prepositions and conjunctions ("and", "or", "but" and maybe one more I cannot remember right now) are not capitalized, but everything else is.
Of course I know that, in fact my AP Style Guide is within arm's reach, and I regularly use Strunk & White as a source for a particular style position, but (apart from "make every word count") these references don't apply to online text, the present topic. Online style isn't print style -- the former isn't formalized to the degree that print style is.
I will know when there's a formal online style, widely accepted, because the first principle will be "no more gray text on a gray background!" I won't hold my breath.
Not that I read it much, of late -- could never stand Orlowski, and recently the site has been defined as "the Daily Mail of Tech", so it's not like I have much of an incentive...
I confess I never noticed the contexts, only that they existed. They're common enough that I suspect there's a macro at the ready in the El Reg editing apps: text =~ s/(\w+)/$1!/g
> Not that I read it much, of late ...
Same here -- the stylistic memes begin to wear on one.
Specifically, I didn't capitalize "are", but the page I linked to says you should capitalize "Are". So using their style (which is probably what I'd use too if I'd been paying more attention), my examples would be:
Sticky Notes Are Catching On
Sticky Notes Are Catching on Tables
Either way would be correct under one style guide or another. Wikipedia has a chart comparing various title case styles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_case#Headings_and_public... (edit: stordoff posted this earlier)
Here's an interesting article on About.com:
http://grammar.about.com/od/tz/g/Title-Case.htm
And an online title case converter (with its own set of rules):
http://individed.com/code/to-title-case/
As I mentioned, this search will tell you more than you ever wanted to know on the topic:
Can anyone explain the capitals in this title? I'm guessing they are correct. But they look erratic / strange / stupid from this pov. Not my native language, so where can I read up on how you'd decide whether to hit shift or not - hoping that it isn't arbitrary.