How does Hugo render tags?

January 2, 2026

My goal is to prevent Hugo from capitalizing tags during the build process.

notes / Go template basics

The Hugo layouts that render tags

In a Hugo theme that was created with hugo new <theme-name>, tags for the /tags page are handled by the /layouts/_partials/taxonomy.html layout, tags that are displayed at the bottom of a post are handled by the /layouts/_partials/terms.html template.

Both layouts render tags in a link:

<a href="{{ .RelPermalink }}">{{ .LinkTitle }}</a>

I’m guessing there’s some sort of modifier (?) function that .LinkTitle could get piped through, but how do tags get capitalized in the first place?

How tag names get capitalized by Hugo

I’m going to accept Claude’s response here. It seems correct to me.

The key to what’s going on is in the Title part of the LinkTitle field or method (see Go template basics for details about terms used in Hugo layout actions.)

The Hugo LinkTitle (and Title) methods apply the Hugo title function. The title function capitalizes the first letter of each word.

How I’m preventing tag names from being capitalized

To prevent tags from being displayed in a capitalized format, I’m adding a pipeline to the action that renders the tags:

taxonomy.html:

{{ define "main" }}
    <h1>{{ .Title }}</h1>
    {{ .Content }}
    {{ range .Pages }}
        <h2><a href="{{ .RelPermalink }}">{{ .LinkTitle | lower }}</a></h2>
    {{ end }}
{{ end }}

The same change has been made to terms.html.

An untested alternate and somewhat more efficient approach would be to use the Name method instead of LinkTitle. (Edit: I actually tested and went with the Name approach):

taxonomy.html:

{{ define "main" }}
    <h1>{{ .Title }}</h1>
    {{ .Content }}
    {{ range .Pages }}
        <h2><a href="{{ .RelPermalink }}">{{ .Name }}</a></h2>
    {{ end }}
{{ end }}

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