The New York Times follows its own in-house style guide for headlines, which differs from both AP Style and Chicago Style. NYT headline style capitalizes all major words while lowercasing only articles and coordinating conjunctions.
NYT Style title case capitalizes the first letter of every major word in a headline, including most prepositions that other style guides would leave lowercase. Only articles such as "a," "an," and "the," along with coordinating conjunctions such as "and," "but," and "or," are consistently lowercased.
The New York Times has maintained this headline style for decades as part of its distinctive editorial voice. It creates headlines that appear bold and prominent, with more capitalization than AP Style but applied more consistently than the exception-heavy Chicago rules.
NYT Style is appropriate when writing headlines for publications that model their editorial standards after prestige American newspapers. It is also a reasonable choice for blog posts and digital publications that want slightly more capitalization than AP Style allows.
Many editors and writers default to NYT Style as a middle ground between AP Style and Chicago Style. Its familiarity makes it easy to recognize and apply consistently across a publication.
Articles and coordinating conjunctions are the primary words that stay lowercase in NYT Style. Prepositions, even short ones like "in," "on," and "at," are generally capitalized depending on their position and emphasis in the headline.
The first word and last word of any headline are always capitalized. Proper nouns, brand names, and trademarked terms follow their standard capitalization regardless of position.
NYT Style and AP Style agree on lowercasing articles and coordinating conjunctions but diverge on prepositions. AP lowercases all prepositions, while NYT Style tends to capitalize them, resulting in more capitalized words overall.
Both styles are appropriate for journalism and digital publishing, and both are far more common in practice than Chicago Style for headline writing. The choice between them usually comes down to the house style of the specific publication.