PDF document titles

When you upload a PDF to the website, it must have a PDF document title. This is legally required under WCAG criterion '2.4.2 Page Titled'.

A 'PDF document title' is not the title that appears at the top of the first page of your document.

Web team policy

Any new PDF forwarded to the Web Team will only be uploaded to the website if it has a document title. If you submit a PDF without a document title it will be returned to you for amendment before resubmitting, and you will be referred to this webpage to help you with this.

Important: Design Studio created PDFs

All PDFs created by the Design Studio should automatically have embedded document titles. If you've submitted a Design Studio created PDF to the Web Team and they've advised you that the document title is missing, please return the PDF to the Design Studio and they will quickly amend this for you so that you can resubmit it – you do not need to follow the remaining instructions on this page.

In all other cases, proceed as follows.

Web editor support

In order to support you, the guidance on this page explains:

what a document title is
how to tell if your PDF has one
how to write a good document title

Other pages provide technical instruction:

As PDFs are created in many different ways, the content here is broad in scope and you should please refer to the information as appropriate for your particular document and software. Once you've created one or two PDFs with document titles you should find the process reasonably straightforward.

If you have any queries not covered by the content here, please email digitalteam@exeter.ac.uk.

What is a PDF document title?

A PDF document title is a title that's embedded into the PDF's code. It's also known as a document metadata title or XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform) title.

What about the visible title?

Unlike the embedded document title, which is required, it's not a requirement for a PDF to have a visible title on its first page – but it is considered best practice to include one.

The purpose of a document title

Assistive technologies will initially announce your PDF using its embedded document title and not any title you may have written at the top of your document.

If your PDF doesn't have a document title then these technologies will announce your document by its filename instead. If the file name is something like 'winterlistfinal.pdf' or 'newform_version2.pdf' this can be uninformative, misleading, confusing or even incomprehensible – and it's a compliance failure.

Assistive technologies use the document title in this way because not everyone includes a written title on the first page of their document, and even those who do will create them in inconsistent ways, sometimes making it challenging for these technologies to determine which part of the text is the actual title.

The document title also used by search engines when they list your PDF.

How to tell if your PDF has a document title

Chrome (simplest and recommended option)

When you open a PDF in Chrome, the PDF document title (if it has one) will be displayed in the browser tab. If the title is particularly long, you may need to hover your mouse over the tab to see the full text. If the browser tab shows the filename instead (which will end with '.pdf'), then the PDF doesn't have a document title.

You can also see the document title by clicking on the 'More actions' icon, a vertical line of three dots, in the top right of the screen just to the right of the printer icon. From there select 'Document properties' and a box will appear displaying the title, which will be blank if it hasn't been entered.

Firefox

When you open a PDF in Firefox:

if the PDF doesn't have a document title, the browser tab will just display the filename
if the PDF does have a document title, the browser tab will display it, and then - if there's room - a hyphen and the filename afterwards.

If the combined text is too long then it will be truncated, even when you hover your mouse over the tab. This means it can be difficult to discern if the tab is displaying just the document title, just the filename, or both, because a title could include a hyphen, and there's not necessarily room for the final '.pdf'.

So the easiest option with Firefox is to instead click on the 'Tools' icon (two arrows pointing to the right in the top right area of the screen when the PDF is open) and then select 'Document Properties' - a box will then appear displaying the document title, which will be blank if it hasn't been entered.

Edge

When you open a PDF in Edge, it will always just display the filename, whether the PDF has a document title or not. So to see the document title in Edge, click the 'Settings' icon (a gear wheel in the top right area of the screen when the PDF is open) and then select 'View document properties' - a box will then appear displaying the document title, which will be blank if it hasn't been entered.

Adobe Acrobat Pro and ABBYY FineReader

When you open a PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro or ABBYY FineReader it might display the document title in the tab containing your PDF (Acrobat) or the top left corner (ABBYY) but whether or not it does this depends on the way the PDF was created, so it's not a reliable method.

The following methods will display a box including the 'Title' field, which will be blank if one hasn't been entered.

Adobe Acrobat Pro

Click on the 'Menu' in the top left of the screen and then select 'Document properties'.

ABBYY FineReader

Click on the 'Menu' (the 'hamburger menu' - a button with three horizontal lines) in the top left of the screen and then select 'File' followed by 'Document properties'.

How to write a good document title

Clarity and accuracy

Make sure your document title describes your PDF clearly and accurately. Remember that it needs to be useful to anyone finding it as a search result among other web pages.

The following would not be good examples of document titles, because they don't provide enough information on what to expect from the document:

Dissertation
List of tables
Fred Smith
Year End Report 2026
Supporting evidence
Map version 3
Spring Summer Programme

Use the right case

Use title case or sentence case only. Any block capitals should only be used for acronyms, and hyphens should only be used for hyphenated words.

Correct examples

Example of Title Case with a BBC Acronym
Example of sentence case with a BBC acronym
Example of sentence case with a hyphenated merry-go-round

Incorrect examples

EXAMPLE OF UPPER CASE WITH A BBC ACRONYM
Example_of_snake_case (words joined by underscores)
EXAMPLE_OF_SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE (uppercase joined by underscores)
Example-of-kebab-case (Sentence case joined by hyphens)
EXAMPLE-OF-UPPER-KEBAB-CASE (uppercase joined by hyphens)
Example-of-Train-Case (Title case joined by hyphens)
exampleOfCamelCase (Words without spaces with the first word in lowercase)
ExampleOfPascalCase (Words without spaces)
Example.Of.Dot.Case (Words joined by dots)

Note: kebab case is used for URLs but it's not appropriate for PDF document titles.

Take care not to include the '.pdf' suffix

Do not include '.pdf' at the end of your document title. This is possible to do accidentally if you copy and paste a reader-friendly filename into the title field. If you do include the '.pdf' suffix, it will give the impression that your PDF doesn't have a document title and that the browser is using the filename instead.

Punctuation

Use whichever punctuation is appropriate for your title or subject field, but don't end either of these with a full stop. It's fine to end the title with a question mark if it is a genuine question.

Newsletters and other documents in a series

If your document is one of a repeated series, such as a newsletter for example, then you need to take care to include information within the document title that will differentiate each publication, so that they can be told apart when all the results appear in a search list. For a newsletter this would typically be the date of issue. So a document title for a newsletter would be something like 'Campus News - April 2025'.

Does the document title need to match the visible title?

If the first page of your document has a visible title, the document title doesn't have to match it. Matching is generally considered good practice, but there are legitimate situations where this wouldn't be appropriate.

For example, if you had a newsletter called 'Hedgehog Highway' then this would be the main title of the publication, but the document title would be better as 'Hedgehog Highway - Autumn 2026' so that it can be differentiated from other editions when listed in search results.

Using the subject field for publications with ambiguous titles

If the official title of your publication doesn't clearly indicate the topic of the PDF, for example you might have a newsletter called 'Spotlight' (which could cover any number of subjects), then you can add a line describing the topic in the metadata 'subject' field.

This is not required but it is considered best practice, and it will help people using assistive technologies to more easily find the information they're looking for.

It's not considered best practice to include this extra information in the document title field. So, for example, you wouldn't give a PDF the minimal document title of 'Dissertation' – it should have the full title – but if further clarity would also be helpful you'd then put that additional information in the subject field.

PDFs in languages other than English

The document title (and subject field if you use it) should be in the same language as the content of the PDF. In practice, proceed as follows:

If the PDF is in a single language, the document title should also be in that language. This may not match the language of the website that the PDF will be uploaded to. Within that website, a link to the document can be in any language you choose, but the PDF's embedded document title must be in the language of that document.
If the PDF is in two languages (i.e. a side-by-side translation, or equivalent), the document title should be in both languages (i.e. one after the other). Ideally separate each title by an en-dash, which is a longer dash than a hyphen, with spaces either side. A forward slash is a reasonable alternative to this. For example:
- Changer le monde – Changing the World (you could copy and paste the en-dash from this line)
- Changer le monde / Changing the World
Don't use any of the following to separate the two titles:
- A hyphen (-)
- A colon (:)
- A pipe (|)
- A comma (,)
- A full stop (.)
- A semi-colon (;)
If the PDF is primarily in one language with significant translations in a second language, provide both titles but put the translated title in parentheses, for example:
- Changer le monde (Changing the World)
If the PDF is primarily in one language with smaller sections of one or more other languages, occasional phrases or quotes for example, then the document title should simply be in the primary language.

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