Capitalization, Titles
Q. Please explain the difference between CMOS 8.32 and 15.21 regarding capitalization of degrees. Section 8.32 says, “Names of degrees . . . are lowercased when referred to generically . . . master of business administration (MBA).” But 15.21 shows “Master of Business Administration.” When is a name of a degree “generic”? Answer »
Q. For front matter, we have eleven or twelve endorsements from prominent deans, presidents, and directors of various international programs. I realize that we generally leave those titles lowercased unless we’re talking about a Named Chair of So and So, but this one is killing me: Senior Fellow at the Blah-Blah Institute. Should I lowercase “senior fellow”? 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’m copyediting a nonfiction book that has several names with titles in running text, such as “President George W. Bush,” “National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley,” and “Ambassador Charles Freeman.” According to CMOS 8.21, do I lowercase the title before the name (president George W. Bush) in running text? It just seems a bit odd to me. 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 would like additional clarification regarding a recent Q&A. You stated that a word that is part of a proper name should not be capitalized if such word is being used as an article in the sentence. The example given was “We evaluated the University of Texas’s enrollment data.” You stated that this was correct even if the proper name of this school is “The University of Texas.” I thought that the goal of good editing was to produce clear, accurate, and comprehensible text. If “The” as part of a proper name is not capitalized, the reader will be led to believe that it is not part of the name. Why create confusion, to say nothing of the insult that may be given in certain cultures and communities where a name may have great significance? 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. This is a query about indexing. Please see the following example and advise: Answer »
Q. I understand the general rules about titles (academic, civic, etc.), but I am working on a project that has quite a few instances of the following: “We are pleased to have the Minister of Food, Agriculture, and Livestock here with us today. . . . We appreciate the support of the Prime Minister of India.” I would lowercase “prime minister of India,” but what to do about the minister of food, agriculture, and livestock? Should it be the minister of Food, Agriculture, and Livestock, all lowercase, or title case? Thanks for your help. 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 »
Q. We are preparing a publication on imperialism and are doing our best to follow CMOS 15’s instruction that “words denoting political divisions . . . are capitalized when they follow a name and are used as an accepted part of the name” (8.55). And so we have “the Ottoman Empire,” “the Roman Empire,” “the American empire,” “the Japanese empire,” etc. But we are concerned that such a treatment, in the scope of the whole publication, may appear inconsistent or preferential. (Is it, after all, the British “Empire” or “empire”?) Do you think it would be acceptable in this context to use the lowercase “empire” in all instances? Of course, even as I put that question to you, writing “the Ottoman empire” doesn’t seem quite right. We would be grateful for any advice you might have on this point. Answer »
Q. My question relates specifically to the term “world-class” and how it is used at my firm. Essentially, the term “world-class” is core to our value proposition, our products and deliverables, and our marketing material. Since this term is very special, we wonder if it is okay to capitalize in the middle of a sentence: “In order for a firm to achieve World-class performance . . .” Our inclination is to always capitalize the W and not the C. Finally, can we exercise our judgment, and just decide how it should appear in all instances regardless of common standards, given the special nature of this term to our business? Answer »
Q. What is the proper pronoun form to use to refer to God? I was taught to capitalize the pronoun “He” when “God” was the antecedent. However, I checked a number of standard grammar handbooks and can’t find any information on this point. Have the rules changed? Answer »
Q. The ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is a British set of books describing best practices for the IT service provider. The books are poorly written, a mess of needlessly long and stultifyingly passive sentences. That fact aside, the ITIL authors also randomly capitalize nouns that they think worthy. What is your position on this quaint custom of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English literature? Whilst you dwell on your response, is there ever a situation where “utilize” adds anything more to its synonym “use” than two extra syllables and a healthy dose of pretentiousness? Looking forward to your glib, yet wise, response. Answer »
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