Basics
Labels

There are two major styles for capitalizing labels, book title and sentence style. Some people argue back and forth how one style is more readable than the other, but what plays the deciding role here is information hierarchy.

Book title capitalization capitalizes the first letter of a single-word item. Capitalization of a multi-word item should be based on title capitalization in the native language. Thus, in English the first letter of the first and last words should always be capitalized and the first letter of all intervening words should all be capitalized except for (i) prepositions having less than five letters, except "From", which should be capitalized (e.g. "for", "in", "with" or "to", but "From" or "Under"), (ii) conjunctions ("and", "or" and "but") and (ii) articles ("the", "a" and "an"). In short titles (buttons, menus) articles are usually dropped and "and" is replaced with "&".

Use either book title capitalization or sentence style capitalization as indicated in the lists below.

• window and dialog box titles
• group box / group line labels
• button labels
• tab labels
• listview column headers
• menu titles / menu items
• derivatives of KCommand
• combobox items
• listbox items
• tree list items
• other heading/title text

Tree list and listbox items that are representative of items found elsewhere in the system, like folders for example, should utilize the capitalization of the represented items.

• edit box labels
• list box labels
• combo box labels
• spin box labels
• check box labels
• option button labels
• spin box labels
• slider labels
• pop-up hint text
• other non heading/title text

The label used for group boxes (that is, the title in a frame that surrounds a group of options) should NOT end with a colon, ':'.

A label in front of an option should end with a colon, ':'.

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