Code Room
CodingMediumcod-g1389
Subject StringsLevel Entry–Mid~15 minCommon in Algorithms & data structures interviewsIndustries Software development

Question

A publishing tool formats headlines in title case. Given a headline of words (letters only) separated by single spaces, capitalize each word — first letter uppercase, the rest lowercase — except that the small words 'a', 'an', 'the', 'and', 'or', 'of', 'in', 'on', 'to' stay entirely lowercase. A small word in the first or last position is still capitalized. For example, 'the state of the art' becomes 'The State of the Art'.

Implement
title_case(headline: str) → str
Examples
in["the state of the art"]out"The State of the Art"
What a strong answer looks like

State your approach and its time/space complexity out loud before you optimize. Handle the edge cases (empty input, duplicates, overflow), and say why you chose this over the brute force. Green tests are the floor, not the grade.

Vibe coding: describe the solution in plain language (or narrate it) and the coach grades your approach. Generating runnable code from your description is coming next.

Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.