Headlines and Titles of Works

A. Our vote would be to apply an initial capital: Rack ’Em Up and Play. The similar contraction ’twas is usually written ’Twas at the beginning of a sentence (as in the opening line of that famous nineteenth-century American poem: ’Twas the night before Christmas . . .), even though the T in ’Twas would be lowercase if the contraction were to be spelled out (It was . . .). In other words, there’s at least one well-known precedent for ignoring an initial apostrophe for the purposes of capitalization.

[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]

A. Parentheses are fine to use in a heading or title of any kind, provided you have a reason to use them; when you do, the punctuation marks are usually ignored when applying headline-style capitalization. For example, Chicago style would be to lowercase “and” in the title of R.E.M.’s 1987 hit song “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine).” Such capitalization isn’t currently covered in CMOS, but the logic is the same as it would be for an em dash used in place of parentheses, as in “Your Guide to College—and Beyond!” (see CMOS 8.164). For the periods in “R.E.M.,” an exception to our rule for initialisms in all caps, see 10.24.

[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]

A. The musical version of The Color Purple would be referred to as “the Color Purple musical”—where “the” is part of the surrounding text (and the The in the title has been omitted). A “the” belonging to the text could also be used before a title that doesn’t include an initial The. For example, a musical version of Star Trek might be referred to as “the Star Trek musical.”

Or consider other scenarios where a title that does include an initial The is used attributively (i.e., modifies another noun—like musical in the examples above). If you were to retain the The in the following example (where the title modifies character), the result would be clearly awkward:

Which Great Gatsby character do you dislike most?

not

Which The Great Gatsby character do you dislike most?

There’s no “the” at all in the first version of that example—which would also be true if you were to refer to “a Color Purple musical,” where the indefinite article “a” displaces the definite article The in the title. In general, when the title of a work is used attributively, be prepared to omit an initial The in favor of the surrounding text. See also CMOS 8.169.

[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]

A. Normally, the italics would cancel each other out, as described in CMOS 8.173, which recommends so-called reverse italics—that is, roman—for the name of a ship within the title of a book or other italicized title. But reverse italics wouldn’t work when the name of the ship is the only word in the title. Instead, use italics to refer to the movie Titanic just as you’d use italics to refer to the Royal Mail Ship (RMS) Titanic.

[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]

A. We apply headline-style capitalization to any book title, whether it’s mentioned in the text or cited in a note or bibliography entry. For example, we’d refer to the Kristina McMorris novel Sold on a Monday (Sourcebooks Landmark, 2018) exactly like that—despite the all-lowercase title on the cover and title page, which this detail from the latter shows:

The same would go for titles styled in all caps on the cover or title page, which we’d render in upper- and lowercase letters (per CMOS 8.159).

But there is at least one exception. The novel them, by Joyce Carol Oates (Fawcett Crest, 1969), is usually so styled, but not because of the cover or title page. The publisher’s preference is made clear on the copyright page and elsewhere, including in this final paragraph of the “Author’s Note,” which hints at the significance of the lowercase t:

Though it wouldn’t be wrong to apply an initial capital, we’d support an exception in that case, however odd it might look:

Oates, Joyce Carol. them. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Crest, 1969.

[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]

A. Except as the first or last word in a title, prepositions (and a few other categories) remain lowercase in titles in Chicago style—and in most other styles—because they’re not considered important enough to capitalize.

The first edition of the Manual (published in 1906) said to capitalize “all the principal words (i.e., nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, first and last words) in English titles of publications” (see ¶ 37). In the examples of titles that followed this advice, only the, and, of, and on—one article, one conjunction, and two prepositions, all of them short—were lowercase.

This advice remained mostly unchanged until the twelfth edition (1969), the first one to name the lowercase exceptions—and to clarify that length isn’t a factor: “Lowercase articles, coordinate conjunctions, and prepositions, regardless of length” (7.123; emphasis added).

A new paragraph demonstrated the rule and included a title with a very long preposition: “Digression concerning Madness” (12th ed., 7.128; emphasis added). Many other styles, including AP, APA, and AMA, would capitalize “concerning” in a title simply because it’s long (four letters is a common limit for prepositions).

At least one style guide, New Hart’s Rules (2nd ed., Oxford, 2014), takes a less strict approach—for example, recommending lowercase for possessive pronouns and allowing for exceptions based on appearance: An Actor and his Time and All About Eve (“a short title may look best with capitals on words that might be left lower case in a longer title” [8.2.3]).

So the rules have always been a little bit arbitrary. But Chicago and most other styles include guidelines that are designed to help writers and editors make quick decisions rather than considering the words in a title on a case-by-case basis. For more on this subject, see “Is ‘Is’ Always Capitalized in Titles?” at CMOS Shop Talk.

[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]

A. The phrase “out of” is listed as a preposition in Merriam-Webster (among other dictionaries), so it would normally remain lowercase in the middle of a title or heading following Chicago style.

But even as part of the phrase “out of,” the word out tends to read like an adverb (or sometimes an adjective, depending on whether it follows a noun or verb form), which may be why publishers seem to want to capitalize it in the phrase “out of” more often than not—as in the titles Bat Out of Hell (the album by Meat Loaf, featuring a song of the same title) and Getting Out of Saigon (a book by Ralph White [Simon & Schuster, 2023]).

Nonetheless, Chicago style would be Bat out of Hell and Getting out of Saigon. This would work well for Meat Loaf’s sixth studio album: Bat out of Hell II: Back into Hell. If nothing else, “out of” is then consistent with “into.”

[Editor’s update: As several of our readers have been kind enough to point out to us, it would make more sense in the Saigon title to treat “getting out” as a phrasal verb than to treat “out of” as a phrasal preposition. The result—​​Getting Out of Saigon—capitalizes the word “out” as an adverb (per CMOS 8.159, rule 3), putting the emphasis where it belongs, on Getting Out.]

[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]

A. Use roman and initial caps in both contexts—for example, when you mention or cite the article “My Spectacular Betrayal” in the Modern Love column in the New York Times.¹ The lack of quotation marks helps keep the name of the column distinct from the article title. See also CMOS 8.177.

__________

1. Samantha Silva, “My Spectacular Betrayal,” Modern Love, New York Times, May 19, 2023.

[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]

A. The word that is always capitalized in a title. That’s because that’s never a preposition, and though it can function as a conjunction—for example, when it introduces a subordinate clause (e.g., “Tell Me That You Mean It”)—it isn’t one of the seven common coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, for, so, yet). In your example, “That” is a relative pronoun.

For more details and examples, see CMOS 8.159 and 8.160.

[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]

A. The lack of italics for the Bible and its books probably has less to do with divine inspiration than with the fact that the word “bible” comes from Greek biblia, meaning “books.” “The Bible,” then, is the proper name for a special set of books rather than the formal title of a publication.

The same might be said of the Koran, or Qur’an, a title that in Arabic means “recitation.” Other sacred works have similarly generic or descriptive titles.

As for Genesis, Exodus, and so on, had the Bible been published as a book for the first time today, it would have been called The Bible (in italics), and each major “book” therein would have been treated as a titled chapter or section and put in quotation marks: “Genesis,” “Exodus,” etc.

Ultimately, it’s up to the author how to style such names. But you might ask your author to consider the idea that the stylistic conventions for referring to the Bible and its books predate modern publishing (and its style guides).

[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]