Dear Geist,

Why does my spelling/grammar checker keep capitalizing the word is in the title of my essay, “What is Empathy”? So annoying! Maybe you've got some obscure grammar data for me. Or maybe I'll just override the !%#$&*! software.

—Viola F., Minneapolis MN

Dear Viola,

Don't touch that override key! The program is right. In “title case,” the style in which titles are often written, most words in the title are capitalized, but a few are not, to promote ease of reading. Supporting words are lowercased: articles (such as a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions (such as and, but, yet, so), prepositions (such as to, for, over, in) and the word to when it is part of an infinitive (to write).

The word is seems to require lowercasing too, because it's a short word similar to so (a conjunction) and in (a preposition). But in “What Is Empathy?” and many other titles, is is a verb, so it gets uppercased.

—The Editors