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Title case or headline case is a style of capitalization used for rendering the titles of published works or works of art in English. When using title case, all words are capitalized, except for minor words (typically articles , short prepositions , and some conjunctions ) that are not the first or last word of the title.
WP:Citing sources § Citation style permits the use of pre-defined, off-Wikipedia citation styles within Wikipedia, and some of these expect sentence case for certain titles (usually article and chapter titles). Title case should not be imposed on such titles under such a citation style consistently used in an article.
The English-language titles of compositions (books and other print works, songs and other audio works, films and other visual media works, paintings and other artworks, etc.) are given in title case, in which every word is given an initial capital except for certain less important words (as detailed at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters ...
Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization.In English, capitalization is primarily needed for proper names, acronyms, and for the first letter of a sentence. [a] Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia.
Generally acronyms and initialisms are capitalized, e.g., "NASA" or "SOS". Sometimes, a minor word such as a preposition is not capitalized within the acronym, such as "WoW" for "World of Warcraft". In some British English style guides, only the initial letter of an acronym is capitalized if the acronym is read as a word, e.g., "Nasa" or ...
In passing references to details of style, it may be appropriate to use lower case terms e.g.: baroque, gothic, mannerist, modernist – but always Renaissance, Impressionist, Middle Ages. A style guide at zeal.com suggests using a dictionary to determine capitalization. However, dictionaries vary on art movement/style capitalization.
The short answer: Because it is not conventional to capitalize these elements across most academic writing (of which encyclopedic writing is a subset). That is, current English does not treat the relevant expressions as proper names (or as associated with proper names) in the ways covered by modern linguistic theory.
Overview: Titles should be capitalized when attached to an individual's name, or where the position/office is a globally unique title that is the subject itself, and the term is the actual title or conventional translation thereof (not a description or rewording). Titles should not be capitalized when being used generically.