Q. Hi there. Please advise those of us who have to deal with music questions in our copyediting. How would you style the name of a concert—in roman or italics? For example, One World: The Concert for Tsunami Relief.
Q. I’m an editor at a law firm. I was recently asked whether there is any difference between “no more than” and “not more than,” as in “Violator will be sentenced to no/not more than five years in prison.” I took a poll in the office, and the other editors said they prefer “no more than,” but they pointed out that “not more than” is common in the legal context.
Q. I’m editing a university press book about the romance genre in England with references and comparisons to the rest of Europe. My question is about CMOS 8.47, which indicates “Continental cuisine; but continental breakfast.” This MS uses “continental” to modify any number of objects and concepts. Which are the exceptions, and which the rule (and why)?
Q. How should I treat names of apps?
Q. I understand that a title following a person’s name should be presented in lowercase. Our Human Resources Department defines official job titles at my college. We have titles that are presented with a comma rather than a preposition. For example: director, human resources, rather than director of human resources. What is the correct way to present the title after a name that includes the comma? Should “human resources” be uppercase or lowercase? Should it be Mary Smith, director, human resources?
Q. My professor has requested that one of our assignments have the titles of tables in headline-style capitalization. What does this mean?
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.
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?
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”?
Q. Which is correct: “on January second” or “on January Second”?
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.