Where can I find a list of capitalisation rules for pure British writing?

Question

Is there any quality English orthography book that contains rules for capitalising in pure British English? I’ve noticed that an American newspaper capitalises every word in the title of an article (except special words like “to”), but a British newspaper does not. I’m pretty confused. I’ve managed to find just an orthography book which apparently describes American rules. Where can I find a British version?

Answer 1

If you want to know the rules for capitalising in British newspapers, a good place to start is style guides of British newspapers.

Here's the entry on capitalisation in the Guardian style guide, and a blog post by their style editor on the subject.

Different newspapers have different styles, and the Guardian favours fewer capitals than others. The Guardian and The Times both publish their style guides as books.

Answer 2

Here are a few:

• The Oxford Style Manual (+1)
• The Guardian Style Guide
• The Economist Style Guide (Online)
• BBC News (archived PDF)
• The Times Style and Usage Guide (Online archive)

Answer 3

It's sounding like you're asking for the Ultimate Authority here, Luka, the one who spells out THE rules. But as Hugo says, different newspapers use different in-house rules. There are also differences - conflicts - between the 'rules' required by and listed in the style guides of other authorities - universities and government departments and publishing houses. Black-and-white answers are simplest, but are rare in the real world. We usually have to be adaptable - drive on the left in the UK, and on the right in the US.