Capitalization, Titles
Q. I am having a discussion/argument with my author’s editor over the presentation of Pizza and its Variations: Beyond Two Pi R, the title [changed for this forum] of a forthcoming book edited by myself. The title is so presented in the UK edition, and the American publisher is insisting that this is incorrect (or at any rate in defiance of normal convention), and “Its” should be used, despite the fact that the lowercase version appears in the book (whose text will be the same in both editions). Quite apart from the question of consistency, I feel that in the case of this particular title a capital ‘I’ would take the eye away from the two important words, “Pizza” and “Variations.” Do you have a (quick, please!) view?
A. Correct headline-style capitalization as defined by The Chicago Manual of Style would call for capital “Its.” All nouns—pronouns included—get capitalized according to our rule (see paragraph 8.167). And while we are flattered that the American publisher is following our guidelines to a tee, I do see your point. Rules are by nature inflexible. And for this particular rule, there’s certainly no loophole such as “but that word’s not important.” An opposite problem was encountered with our own publication of the novel A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean (yes, the lowercase “l” is how he spelled his name). According to our rules at the time, “through,” a preposition, would not get a capital “t” in titles. Somebody here wisely objected to this, so we capitalized it. We've since added an exception for prepositions that are stressed or used adjectivally or adverbially.
Sometimes I see other titles—John Updike’s Rabbit Is Rich comes to mind—for which I’d rather break the rule. It seems that it should be, for example, Rabbit is Rich, “is” playing its almost invisible linking role, nothing more. And at least one paperback edition of that book featured lowercase “is” on its cover. (Perhaps the goal was to emphasize the two R words in keeping with the rest of Updike’s tetralogy: Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; and Rabbit at Rest.) But I came late to CMOS (that is, a couple of years after I’d reached the age of majority); years of copyediting have since knocked down (or flogged out) most of my objections to following a title-capitalization rule based on parts of speech. I now secretly thrill as I capitalize, for example, errant instances of “it” as I comb through a bibliography.
Keep in mind, finally, that the rule was more than likely imposed to allow copyeditors and authors to make quick, consistent, logical, and reasonable decisions about capitalization when writing or fixing the sometimes immense number of titles mentioned in academic monographs. At some point, considerations of meaning and aesthetics can probably be let in—especially on the cover of a book, and especially for a work of fiction.
