Learn English – What to capitalize in table headings

capitalization

I'm writting a table for a scientific paper and I'm not sure what to capitalize in the column-headings. Which rule should be used? Normal English capitalization (then the next question is: write the first word upper case?) or the one where everything except for some words (of, in…) is written in uppercase?

Example for the possibilites:

         | Programming Language | Programming language | programming language | 
         ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
System 1 | Java                 | Python               | Erlang               |

Best Answer

Chicago Manual of Style, the style guide which journal styles in the mathematical and physical sciences are most often based on —including the IEEE, the most widely followed style guide in computer science— follows your option #2, "Programming language".

You don't say what style you are writing to: If you are planning to submit it to a journal or as part of a book, the publisher's guidelines for authors should have sufficient information for you to decide. If you are submitting it as part of degree coursework, your university might or might not have a rule here. Otherwise, consider yourself bound only by the requirement to be consistent.