Q. If a title uses “as well as” as a conjunction meaning “and,” should it be lowercase in Chicago-style title case, as in “Apples as well as Oranges”? I’m seeing some similar book titles with “Well” capitalized, but “Apples as Well as Oranges” seems as if it could be misread.
A. First, “as well as” isn’t one of the common coordinating conjunctions named along with and in CMOS 8.160 (in rule 4). Second, even if the rule did extend to synonyms of those words, we would normally analyze the words in a phrase separately when applying title case. Accordingly, the adverb “Well” would get an initial cap, whereas the adverb/conjunction “as” would remain lowercase (per rule 5, which specifies that the word as remains lowercase in any grammatical function).
Chicago’s title-case rules, which are meant for titles mentioned in text or as part of a source citation, favor editorial expediency over aesthetic considerations. On a book cover or title page or the like, a designer may choose to de-emphasize a phrase like “as well as” by using lowercase letters or a smaller font (or both). See CMOS 8.158 for more details.
Extra credit: Starting with the 18th edition of CMOS, prepositions of more than four letters are capitalized in titles. Until then, prepositions were lowercased “regardless of length” (a clarification added to the 12th edition, published in 1969). This led some editors (including our own) to apply lowercase to phrasal prepositions like “according to,” as in “The Gospel according to Matthew,” which we’d now style as “The Gospel According to Matthew.” Not only is “according to” longer than four letters, but “according” by itself is a participle, not a preposition.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. In Spanish text, titles of books are set in sentence case, but should they also be set in italics? And how about titles of book series and the like?
A. If you’re applying Chicago style, and often even if you’re not, book titles are italicized in Spanish-language contexts, whereas series titles are usually in roman (regular) type—both as they would be in English.
So, whether your text is in Spanish or English, you would refer to The Chicago Manual of Style (note the title case, usually retained for English titles in Spanish-language contexts) but el (or “the” in English contexts) Manual de estilo Chicago-Deusto (a version of CMOS adapted for Spanish and published in 2013 by the University of Deusto, or Universidad de Deusto, in partnership with the University of Chicago Press; as with books in English, an initial article isn’t always part of the title).
As for a book series, you would refer to (for example) Bonsái (Editorial Anagrama, 2006), a novel by Alejandro Zambra published as part of the series Narrativas hispánicas. Again, these novel and series titles would be treated the same whether your text is in English or Spanish. Titles of series, though, occasionally appear in title case, which is how names of periodicals and publishers are usually treated (e.g., the journal Revista Mexicana de Sociología or the publisher Fondo de Cultura Económica). When in doubt, follow the usage in the source.
For more guidance, consult Chicago-Deusto. Additional resources are available online from the Real Academia Española, including the freely accessible Libro de estilo de la lengua española (a Spanish stylebook first published in 2018); in that guide, see “Clase de letra” (on styling text), and especially “Cursiva demarcativa para delimitar expresiones denominativas” (on italics for titles of books and the like).
In CMOS, see paragraphs 11.67–76. For the titles of book series, which are sometimes in italics, see 8.178.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I’m looking for confirmation on how to capitalize a word in a title that has a portion of the word in parentheses—e.g., Peter Adey, “If Mobility Is Everything Then It Is Nothing: Towards a Relational Politics of (Im)mobilities.” Is “(Im)mobilities” OK as is, rather than “(Im)Mobilities” (which looks odd to me)? Thanks!
A. If something looks odd to you, there’s a chance it will look odd to others (which is why it’s a good idea to take any objection to something in your work seriously, even if you end up keeping things as is). In case it helps, we think the version with the capital M looks weird, so as far as we’re concerned, your hunch is right: “(Im)mobilities” is the way to go.
And don’t be misled by the Chicago citation generated via the “Cite this article” link at the Taylor & Francis page for the Adey article. It’s clear that the initial caps in the article title in that author-date citation have been applied automatically (overriding the lowercase in the original title for “is” and “it” but going a step too far next to the parenthesis).
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. How should I capitalize a foreign phrase within a title? For example, in sentence case, “The loi de position as a pedagogical norm.” I recall that an isolated non-English word would be capitalized (“The Loi as a . . .”), as would the first word in an included non-English title, but I can’t find anything regarding a phrase.
A. Except for any words that would be capped in the original language, both words and phrases in sentence-case titles can remain lowercase. The following titles from peer-reviewed journals illustrate this usage:
“The loi de position and the acoustics of French mid vowels,” by Benjamin Storme, in Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 2, no. 1 (2017): 64,* https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.300.
“Diachronic evolution of the subordinator kak in Russian,” by Natalia Serdobolskaya and Irina Kobozeva, in Linguistics 62, no. 3 (2024): 691–728, https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2021-0213.
but
“Volk against Kaste: Nondemocratic popular sovereignty in Nazi Germany,” by Luna Sabastian, in Journal of Modern History 96, no. 4 (2024): 842–80, https://doi.org/10.1086/732675.
In that last example, the initial capitals in Volk and Kaste follow the rule for German nouns (see CMOS 11.42). Here are the same three titles in title case (usually preferred in Chicago style for the titles of works):
“The Loi de position and the Acoustics of French Mid Vowels”
“Diachronic Evolution of the Subordinator Kak in Russian”
“Volk Against Kaste: Nondemocratic Popular Sovereignty in Nazi Germany”
As the first example suggests, the non-English terms are in sentence case, according to which the first word and any other word that would normally be capitalized gets an initial cap. Alternatively, we could have applied title case to the French phrase:
“The Loi de Position and the Acoustics of French Mid Vowels”
You can do that if you know the parts of speech in the other language. In the title above, de remains lowercase as a preposition, but the nouns Loi and Position (which would normally be lowercase in a French title when not the first word) get initial caps. See also CMOS 11.28.
__________
* The number 64 is the article ID assigned by Glossa, an online-only open-access journal that isn’t paginated across issues in the traditional way (see CMOS 14.71 for more details). If you were to cite specific pages in a note (from the PDF version, which starts at page 1), you’d want to clarify what the numbers mean: “. . . (2017): pp. 3–4, article no. 64.”
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. According to Merriam-Webster, “than” can function as a conjunction or a preposition. If using title case, would you capitalize “than” in the following title? “There Is More Than One Path to a Successful Meal.” I think so, but I’m not sure what part of speech “than” is in expressions like “more than” and “less than.” Thanks!
A. When than is followed by a noun that acts as its object, then it’s a preposition and can be lowercased in a title; if it’s instead followed by a clause (with a subject and a verb—though the verb is sometimes omitted but understood), then assume it’s a conjunction and give it a capital T.
In your example, where the noun path is the object of the preposition than, you’d use lowercase for the latter:
“There Is More than One Path to a Successful Meal”
But in the following example, where than is followed by a clause and is therefore a conjunction, you’d apply a capital T:
“A Successful Meal Requires More Than I Bargained For”
It might be easier to make an exception and capitalize than even when it’s acting as a preposition rather than as a conjunction (see CMOS 5.189 for an explanation of how these two uses differ). But until that dream becomes a reality (19th edition, maybe?), you’ll need to figure out the grammar before deciding what to do.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Good morning! We’re wondering what to do with the word “but” on the front cover of our newest release: “Present, but Not Counted.” Is it acceptable to cap “But” on the front cover because it looks better than a lowercase “but”? The title in the running heads is in small caps, so no issue there. Citations and references to this title would of course use a lowercase b, but is there a rule about cover text? Or do we have some liberty? Thank you very much.
A. You have some liberty. As your question suggests, the rules in CMOS for capitalizing titles of works apply only to titles that are mentioned or cited in text, notes, bibliographies, and so on. So you can go ahead and put But instead of but on the cover—and on the title page if you prefer. In both places, design takes precedence over the style for text.
But you don’t need to throw out the rules entirely. Instead, you can use the design rather than capitalization alone to de-emphasize words (like but) that would normally be lowercase in a title.
For example, the cover of the 2022 memoir by musician William “Billy Boy” Arnold (written with Kim Field and published by the University of Chicago Press) features all caps for the title words except for of, which is lowercase and italic (and in a different font and lighter color):
When mentioned or cited, that would be The Blues Dream of Billy Boy Arnold, not THE BLUES DREAM of BILLY BOY ARNOLD.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. How should one style the title of a work in a discussion not of that work, but of its title. As an example, consider the following sentence:
The novel’s title, “Pride and Prejudice,” refers to a pair of traits seen in all of its characters.
Should the title be set in roman and within quotation marks because it is a phrase being mentioned (rather than used)? Or does the fact that it IS a title prevail, so that it should be italicized and without quotation marks? Or perhaps some tertium—or even quartum—quid? My sense is that because in that sentence its referent is not Austen’s book itself but the character flaws that recur in its plot, the italics would be inappropriate. Do I have that right?
A. You might be overthinking this. The novel’s title is Pride and Prejudice, a three-word italic phrase that names a pair of traits exhibited by many people, including the characters in that book. Chicago-style italics for book titles doesn’t prevent you from discussing what the words mean.
But if you really want to get your readers to home in on the title words as words, try something like this: “The nouns in the novel’s title, pride and prejudice, refer to a pair of traits . . .” or “The nouns in the novel’s title, ‘pride’ and ‘prejudice,’ refer to a pair of traits . . .”
For the use of italics or quotation marks to refer to words as words (either treatment is correct), see CMOS 7.66.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. In the headline “Rack ’em Up and Play,” would Chicago support ’em or ’Em? (It’s for an article about a billiards-themed mobile game. We follow Chicago, so our headlines are always in title case. And we have a casual style, hence the contraction.) I’m consumed by indecision. On the one hand, ’Em is technically a pronoun, standing in for Them, and pronouns regardless of length are capitalized in headlines. On the other, I get stuck on the fact that the initial letter of the full word is what would be capitalized, and that initial letter is removed by the contraction. No initial letter, no capital? Aesthetically the lowercase option looks better to me, but other colleagues have said lowercase looks like a mistake to them. Help!
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.]
Q. Hello. Looking for a bit of clarification on headings with parentheses. Should we avoid them? If parentheses are used, what is the proper way to use them in headline style? For example, is “Your Guide to College (And Beyond!)” the correct way to list this chapter title/heading? Thank you.
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.]
Q. Would it be “the Color Purple musical” or “The Color Purple musical”?
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.]