Capitalization, Titles
Q. I am ghostwriting a memoir for a client who once worked at a German motorcycle magazine known as mo, lowercase. I am struggling with capitalization rules for this in the English-language memoir I am writing. The client does not want to write “mo magazine” each time it is referenced, and when written in lowercase, mo seems to get lost in each paragraph, even when italicized. What would CMOS recommend in a situation such as this? Answer »
Q. Should the first letter of all words in the title of a book, movie, or play be capped? I’ve sometimes seen the first letter of prepositions and articles in lowercase. Answer »
Q. Question: When the day of a month is spelled out, as in “the second of January,” should it be capitalized, i.e., “the Second of January”? Answer »
Q. Which is correct: “on January second” or “on January Second”? Answer »
Q. Should I capitalize “the states” when used alone (referring to the United States)? I’m copyediting a novel in which the author capitalizes “the States” when used alone. I think it would be lowercased. Answer »
Q. A coworker with a PhD in English lit comments that your example of title casing “Four Theories concerning the Gospel according to Matthew” isn't correct at all. “Concerning” and “according” are participles, not prepositions (thus these are participial, not prepositional, phrases). I've absolutely never seen “Gospel according to Anyone”—it's always “According to.” Thoughts? I'm not just nitpicking; trying to get a group of proofreaders and editors to pull together consistently on little stuff like this. Answer »
Q. I work at an ad agency, and I’m the only writer/editor/proofreader on staff. A recent title bothered our creative director because only one word in it was not capitalized (unbalanced from a design perspective, I guess): Why Full-Service Advertising Is More Important than Ever. My question is, first of all, am I correct that the word “than” should be lowercased in the above title? And second, what’s your opinion on making capitalization decisions on ad copy based on how things look? I’m willing to fudge the rules a bit for great design, but I’m not willing to throw the rules out the window altogether. Answer »
Q. I am writing a novel. How do I write a title of a song in the body of the work (caps, bold, underline, italics, etc.)? Example: The Zombies’ “She’s Not There” looped in his head. Answer »
Q. Quotation marks in titles and subheads seem inappropriate, except those required when referring to particular works. However, I can find no reference to support my position in Chicago or elsewhere. I’m supposing that is because scare quotes in heads are a rare occurrence. Answer »
Q. What is the proper way of capitalizing foreign titles appearing at the end of English titles and subtitles? For example, hypothetically, should it be “Aeneas Traveling Noctis per umbram” or “Aeneas Traveling Noctis per Umbram”? Headline style seems to conflict with Chicago recommendations for foreign titles. There doesn’t seem to be any advice for melding the two, as far as I can tell. Answer »
Q. I am writing a government report, and the first letters of words in the title are supposed to be capitalized. In such a case, should prepositions be capitalized? The government employee who edited my work said that along should be capitalized, but not of, and this doesn’t make any sense to me. Answer »
Q. I am quoting from a document that has a lot of words in all caps, for emphasis. In my report the quote appears as a block quote, and I feel that I should affirm that the capitalization is in the original, not added by me. Should I make this affirmation with a parenthetical comment, or should I just leave it alone? Answer »
Q. Our company, an art auction house, has decided to adopt sentence-style capitalization because we feel the visual flow is easier to read. The names of sales are based on the names of our departments, e.g., “The Old Master Paintings department will have its Old master paintings sale in June.” Is that style appropriate? Answer »
Q. I am editor for a group of academic writers, who recently squawked when I mentioned the following guideline in the CMOS, 15th edition (8.180): use lowercase and no italics for “the” in a newspaper title, even if it is part of the official title. Their concerns: (1) it seems unscholarly to treat “the” as a generic term when it is part of the official title; (2) doesn’t this flout copyright protocol? (3) why does the rule apply only to American newspapers? I found myself unable to offer concrete reasons for the rule, so I said I would ask the CMOS editors directly. Answer »
Q. How would you treat the title of a blog—roman with quotation marks, roman without quotation marks, or italic? Answer »
Q. In a software application that catalogues musical albums in a sidebar column for playback selection the main developer insists on using italics for the album titles. I advised to drop the italics mainly because on today’s low-resolution screens italic typefaces are rendered poorly. I reasoned that the CMOS advice that artwork titles should be set in italics is to be construed as a device of emphasis that sets the respective title off from the flowing text. If the context would consist of titles only (and no surrounding text) there would not be a need for emphasis, hence no italicization. Is this correct? Answer »
Q. When working in an electronic format that does not allow italics, how should you treat the titles of books? Answer »
Q. Should “foundation” be capitalized in the following phrase? “With funding from the Ford and Simon foundations.” I thought it should be capped, since it means “from the Ford Foundation and the Simon Foundation,” but a coworker thinks otherwise. Answer »
Q. Should one capitalize academic degrees? I am reading a quasi-academic journal and am wondering about the capitalization of three words in the following sentence: “He was hoping to use his Associate of Applied Science degree.” Answer »
Q. When spelling out a proper name that is also known by an acronym, is it acceptable to capitalize more than one letter in a word that contributes multiple letters to the acronym? To give an example, the name of an organization named Techno Hub Innovation Kawasaki (THINK) came up in a document that I translated from Japanese to English, and the client wants to spell the organization Techno Hub INnovation Kawasaki. Although the organization’s Web site itself uses INnovation, it looks wrong to me. Am I right? Answer »
Q. This is the title of a section heading. Should it be “The Importance of Well-Written Reports” or “The Importance of Well-written Reports”? Should we capitalize “written”? Answer »
Q. What would you say to a translator who says that an author’s use of all caps for EMPHASIS should stand? I tried to invoke house style but she is claiming it is, well, LITERARY. I’d like to explain to the author and translator this looks AMATEUR at best, and to say, look, WE JUST DON’T DO THAT. Answer »
Q. I work for a company that every two or three years puts out what it refers to as a medium-term management plan. When we refer to this plan in running text, such as in our annual report and in-house publications, should we treat this as an essay and place quotation marks around the name (8.187), as a notice and use capitalized headline style (8.209), or as a freestanding publication requiring italics (8.178)? Answer »
Q. Section 8.167 (3) of the 15th Manual of Style says that, when applying headline style, a preposition should be capitalized if it is stressed (A River Runs Through It). Please clarify what is meant by “stressed.” Furthermore, how would you capitalize “One Nation under God”? Thank you. Answer »
Q. Help! I’m teaching a grammar and usage class to my coworkers. I was sailing along, pointing out that it’s correct to use a lowercase s when referring to Washington the state. My next sentence, however, used capitals in this way: “the City of Olympia.” I did so, I admit, out of habit. So when does a name become official? Thank you. Answer »
Q. Some years ago my advisor in college drummed into my head that the titles of tables appear above the table, and titles of figures should go below the figure. Can you verify this? Thanks. Answer »
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