What’s the best way to capitalise the first letter of each word in a string in SQL Server

From http://www.sql-server-helper.com/functions/initcap.aspx

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[InitCap] ( @InputString varchar(4000) ) 
RETURNS VARCHAR(4000)
AS
BEGIN

DECLARE @Index          INT
DECLARE @Char           CHAR(1)
DECLARE @PrevChar       CHAR(1)
DECLARE @OutputString   VARCHAR(255)

SET @OutputString = LOWER(@InputString)
SET @Index = 1

WHILE @Index <= LEN(@InputString)
BEGIN
    SET @Char     = SUBSTRING(@InputString, @Index, 1)
    SET @PrevChar = CASE WHEN @Index = 1 THEN ' '
                         ELSE SUBSTRING(@InputString, @Index - 1, 1)
                    END

    IF @PrevChar IN (' ', ';', ':', '!', '?', ',', '.', '_', '-', '/', '&', '''', '(')
    BEGIN
        IF @PrevChar != '''' OR UPPER(@Char) != 'S'
            SET @OutputString = STUFF(@OutputString, @Index, 1, UPPER(@Char))
    END

    SET @Index = @Index + 1
END

RETURN @OutputString

END
GO

There is a simpler/smaller one here (but doesn't work if any row doesn't have spaces, "Invalid length parameter passed to the RIGHT function."):

http://www.devx.com/tips/Tip/17608

If you are looking for the answer to the same question in Oracle/PLSQL then you may use the function INITCAP. Below is an example for the attribute dname from a table department which has the values ('sales', 'management', 'production', 'development').

SQL> select INITCAP(dname) from department;

INITCAP(DNAME)
--------------------------------------------------
Sales
Management
Production
Development

A variation of the one I've been using for quite some time is:

CREATE FUNCTION [widget].[properCase](@string varchar(8000)) RETURNS varchar(8000) AS
BEGIN   
    SET @string = LOWER(@string)
    DECLARE @i INT
    SET @i = ASCII('a')
    WHILE @i <= ASCII('z')
    BEGIN
        SET @string = REPLACE( @string, ' ' + CHAR(@i), ' ' + CHAR(@i-32))
        SET @i = @i + 1
    END
    SET @string = CHAR(ASCII(LEFT(@string, 1))-32) + RIGHT(@string, LEN(@string)-1)
    RETURN @string
END

You can easily modify to handle characters after items other than spaces if you wanted to.