Q. Can you please confirm the correct spelling of “TIME magazine”? CMOS 8.171 has Time magazine. However, TIME customer service tells me that TIME Magazine is correct. I think “magazine” should be lowercased, since it does not appear anywhere on the cover, and I do not think it is part of the official name of the magazine, even though they capitalize it on their website. What do you think?
A. We’re sticking with Time magazine. One of the best things about having a style guide is not having to phone every organization in a document and talk to customer service; instead, we use the style manual to present titles consistently. Even if you were to check the periodical itself, you might find that the magazine cover has one spelling (TIME) but the copyright information has another (Time) and yet another is used in running text (Time). And you know for sure that if you phoned again, a different rep would give you a different answer.