What Are The Rules Governing Word Capitalization In Headlines (i.e.
Are Words Like 'At' And 'Of' Supposed To Be Capitalized), And Why Do
Some Newspapers Continue With This Practice Given That It's Much
Harder To Read Text Which Is Written In This Way?

Hi Pendant!

I'm afraid there is no firm rule on which word to capitalize and which
not to capitalize. There's two major reasons why this capitalizing is
done:

1. You want to emphacise certain words.
2. You are a German speaker, or know the language pretty well and
capitalizing nouns is like second nature to you.

You might want to take a look at this page (
http://www.brisney.com/headlines.htm ) here to have a more thorough
explanation for #1. Almost all pages that I checked through answering
this question advise to use this instrument sparingly - otherwise it
really gets irritating as you mentioned above!

As to #2, all nouns and names are capitalized automatically in the
German language. It looks absolutely normal for me to see a headline
that says: "Capitalization thought to be harmful to your Health!" or
"The Instrument of capitalizing Words in Headlines is best used
sparingly". You will find this type of capitalization mostly on
webpages or maybe scientific and business documents, as there are a
lot of Germans out there publishing in English.

As a German speaker I also have to contest your impression that it is
much harder to read a sentence with capitalized words. We read those
every day and I never heard anybody complain. I think it confirms the
reasoning behind explanation #1 - you actually take a look at the
capitalized words. They stick out to you and thereby serve exactly the
intended purpose!

I hope this was a satisfactory explanation! If you have further
questions, please ask for clarification!

voyager-ga

Search Strategy:

capitalizing words headlines
://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=capitalizing+words+headlines

Particularly relevant answer because it came from someone whose native
language appears to be non-English, which puts the question into
perspective. If you get to read this (I'm new to answers.google):
danke, Voyager!

This seems to be a peculiarity of US style.  It's not done in the UK.

Hi pendant,
Although that a few different sources for capitalization rules, many
publications use the Chicago Manual of Style as their style guide.
Here is what it has to say about "headline style":
 
"In regular title capitalization, also known as headline style, the
first and last words and all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs,
adverbs, and subordinating conjunctions (if, because, as, that, etc.)
are capitalized. Articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions
(and, but, or, for, nor), and prepositions, regardless of length, are
lowercased unless they are the first or last word of the title or
subtitle."
 
Remember that in newspaper headlines, articles (a, an, and the) are
omitted, so you can ignore that last capitalization rule. Hope this
helps!
Search strategy: "Chicago Manual of Style"
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/cmosfaq/
-rajbot

Many thanks for the input, Voyager, Michael2, Rajbot. I wonder whether
the (English-speaking) Web will evolve to adopt the US or the UK
style. I would personally prefer the latter, as I find this much
easier to read - but then I'm from the UK :)

It's clearly harder to read ALL CAPS, I don't know that it's harder to
read Initial Caps in a headline.

What does being a German speaker have to do with using caps in
newspaper headlines?

In recent years, most American newspapers have stopped the use of
capitalization in headlines, except for the first word and any words
that would be capitalized in body text. The Associated Press stopped
capitalizing secondary words in headlines a couple of years ago, I
think. Far more newspapers use AP style than Chicago style, although
most newspapers changed their headline style before the AP did.

Hi, rnh. You asked "What does being a German speaker have to do with
using caps in newspaper headlines?"

Well, strictly speaking, it has nothing to do with it: but Voyager's
answer included the snippet "As a German speaker I also have to
contest your impression that it is much harder to read a sentence with
capitalized words. We read those every day and I never heard anybody
complain."

As I am from the UK and have been brought up with headlines that don't
use the various US-style capitalization conventions, I'm not used to
this, and as a result I personally find such text less readable (in
fact, MUCH less). Voyager adds perspective to the issue: I'm assuming
that he's saying that Germans capitalize text in similar ways to the
US (although having re-read what he wrote he does only refer to
capitalizing nouns, which we do in the UK too).

You go on to say "It's clearly harder to read ALL CAPS, I don't know
that it's harder to read Initial Caps in a headline." Of course this
is "Google Answers" not "Google Polls"; but if you were to declare
your nationality this might help illustrate the point. If you're from
the US, then I would not be at all surprised to find that you would
not find Initial Caps hard to read - you will (presumably) have been
brought up on them: but I *would* be surprised if you were brought up
in the UK and still felt this way.

To me, all of this highlights the fact that readability of such text
is not just a "UK vs US" matter: it's yet another illustration of why
we shouldn't drop the "World Wide" in WWW :)