Q. What is the correct way to write “four o’clock” as a book title?
A. Treat the contracting apostrophe in “o’clock” as if it were a hyphen and write Four O’Clock—capital O and C. The O is capitalized as the first word in a compound term, and the C because clock is a noun. If it helps, think of the title as short for “Four Of-the-Clock” (rather than “Four of the Clock”—though the latter is how the term would normally be spelled out).
See also CMOS 8.162, which explains Chicago’s rules for capitalizing hyphenated compounds in titles.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Why is “Speaking” in the example “Non-English-Speaking Representatives” in the 17th edition capitalized? Since “non-” is a prefix and cannot stand alone as a word, shouldn’t “speaking” be lowercase? Thank you for your explanation.
A. That principle in the 17th edition applied only to the second element in a hyphenated term formed with a prefix. For example,
Are Antihistamines Overprescribed? (lowercase h in “histamines”)
Are Anti-intellectuals Overrated? (lowercase i in “intellectuals”)
It wouldn’t apply to a third element, like “Speaking” in “Non-English-Speaking.”
And note that, starting with the 18th edition, CMOS recommends capitalizing the second element in a hyphenated compound formed with a prefix (“Anti-Intellectuals”). See CMOS 8.162.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. When an author publishes a work that violates Chicago’s style for title case, should we convert the citation to Chicago style or leave it as the author designated? Is this discussed anywhere in CMOS?
A. It’s not uncommon for the title of a book, article, or other work to use a capitalization style that’s different from the one recommended by Chicago. In (almost) all cases, Chicago style (or whatever style you follow) would take precedence when such a title is mentioned in the text. Most advise applying some variation of title case.
For example, both the cover and title page for Finding Me, the memoir by Viola Davis (HarperOne, 2022), feature all caps: FINDING ME. Chicago style, as we’ve just seen, would apply title case (and italics).
Or there’s The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor—the Truth and the Turmoil, by Tina Brown (Crown, 2022). On that book’s cover and title page, the main title is in all caps, and the subtitle is in title case. There’s no colon between title and subtitle. Chicago style imposes title case for the main title and adds a colon (see CMOS 8.167).
Not that we’d never make an exception. For example, Chicago style would normally call for Star Trek: Into Darkness as the title of that 2013 film. Both the movie posters and the title screen itself feature all-caps “STAR TREK” on its own line; “INTO DARKNESS” is on the line below that, in a type size that differentiates it from the line above. CMOS would therefore treat “Star Trek” as the main title and “Into Darkness” as the subtitle—adding a colon between the two.
But we know that—after much debate—the world seems to have settled on Star Trek Into Darkness (capital I, no colon). The preposition “into” wouldn’t normally merit a capital I without the colon, and the absence of a colon does seem a little odd, but we’d allow both exceptions in the spirit of maintaining intergalactic harmony.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Is the word “to” capitalized in a title or heading when used as part of an infinitive verb?
A. Whoever decided that “to” should be considered part of the infinitive verb form in English has caused more trouble than such a small word is worth (see “infinitives, split”). It certainly doesn’t merit capitalization in titles. The first eleven editions of CMOS said to capitalize all “important” words in a title: “nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, first words, and last words.” Starting with the twelfth edition, that advice was expanded to clarify that “verbs” did not extend to the “to” in infinitives, which should remain lowercase in titles (see CMOS 8.160 in the current, or eighteenth, edition). So,
Born to Run (where “to” marks the infinitive)
“Midnight Train to Georgia” (where “to” is a preposition)
But, when “to” is the first or last word,
To Kill a Mockingbird (infinitive marker)
To the Lighthouse (preposition)
“If You Asked Me To” (infinitive marker [verb implied])
Exceptions in the middle of a title would be rare. Here’s one, in the title of an article from volume 2012 of the journal Supreme Court Review:
“ ‘To Regulate,’ Not ‘To Prohibit’: Limiting the Commerce Power”
CMOS doesn’t cover that scenario. (If we did, we might say to capitalize the first and last words in a quoted phrase within a title.) Rarer still would be a title that featured “to” as an adverb—as in the phrase “come to” in the sense of “regain consciousness.” You’ll have to take our word for it that we’d capitalize the T in that case.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I work on science textbooks and science trade books (I wonder why I’ve never needed to ask this question before) and have this question: Does one capitalize “sp.” (or “spp.”) in titles? For example: “Dinarda Spp.: The Sneaky Thief.” Unabbreviated, the word “species” would be capitalized. However, were it the actual species name, it would be lowercased. It does look odd capitalized, since it is never so in text, but I’m leaning toward capitalization as being correct. Possibly the answer to this question lies within (within CMOS, that is), but if so I’ve not been able to find it. What say you?
A. As of the 18th edition, we cover this situation in CMOS 8.160, rule 7:
Lowercase the second part of a species name, such as fulvescens in Acipenser fulvescens, even if it is the last word in a title or subtitle (and including the abbreviations “sp.” and “spp.” used in place of the second part of the name; see 8.124).
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Hello: When using title case (CMOS 8.160), does a participial preposition (CMOS 5.181) appear in lowercase or does it get initial caps? Thanks very much.
A. The terms listed in 5.181 (assuming, barring, concerning, considering, during, notwithstanding, owing to, provided, regarding, respecting, and speaking of) are all longer than four letters, so they’d get initial caps under Chicago’s latest rules for title case. But other than to and of, those words are participles, not prepositions, so they’d be capped regardless (whereas to and of would remain lowercase).
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Should national anthems—for example, La Marseillaise—be set in quotes?
A. A national anthem is a song by any other name, but with more pomp and circumstance. So whether it’s “La Marseillaise” or “O Canada”—or “March of the Volunteers,” a song written in 1934 and later adapted as the anthem of the People’s Republic of China—put it in quotation marks.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. For a book title within a book title in a language other than English, should quotation marks be inserted around the title within the title, just as we would for English-language titles (per CMOS 8.175)?
A. Usually, yes. For example, the French translation of Alice Kaplan’s Looking for “The Stranger” (University of Chicago Press, 2016), like the English original, presents the title of Camus’s famous book in italics on its cover:
En quête de L’Étranger
To mention or cite this title in Chicago style, you would put the whole title in italics and add quotation marks (as for the English-language version), as in the following example of a bibliography entry (which retains the alternative French style for capitalizing titles as discussed in CMOS 11.30):
Kaplan, Alice. En quête de “L’Étranger.” Translated by Patrick Hersant. Gallimard, 2016.
Books in French or Spanish may use guillemets (« ») instead of italics for a title within a title; books in German may use reverse guillemets (» «) or inverted quotation marks („ “); other languages may follow similar conventions. You can convert such marks to English-style quotation marks (per CMOS 11.9). But if the title within a title isn’t differentiated as such on the cover (or title page) in any discernible way, and unless you are familiar with the conventions of the original language, it may be best to reproduce the title without adding quotation marks.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I’m editing a biography (in English) of a French historical figure that contains many French-language titles of works, including plays, books, poems, and artwork. I’m applying Chicago’s rule of sentence-case capitalization to these titles (for example, La dame aux camélias). But what about a title like Les Misérables? Should that actually be written Les misérables? That doesn’t seem right.
A. If you were to use sentence case for French titles of works, then yes—you would write Les misérables, because “misérables” is not a proper noun. But French usage varies. You’ll see sentence-style capitalization in some of the product descriptions at Amazon.fr for Victor Hugo’s novel (and its adaptations in other media); more often you’ll see what looks like title case. But as a longer title would show, that isn’t title case; it’s the Académie française–approved style that capitalizes the definite article and the first substantive (and any intervening adjective or adverb). That’s the style you’ll see on many French book covers and title pages (and according to which your other example would be styled La Dame aux camélias). CMOS mentions this style as an alternative in paragraph 11.30. We recommend sentence case first because it’s easy to apply and applicable across many languages. But you can make an exception and follow the more common French practice, especially in a work with a French theme (and assuming you are familiar enough with French to apply the rule correctly). For a fuller statement of the rule (in French), see the discussion of capital letters in titles of works (“majuscules dans les titres d’œuvres”) under “Questions de langue” at the website of the Académie française (where Les Misérables is used as an example).
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Not actually a question but a comment on one of your recent answers, regarding type style for book titles on social media platforms. You left out a common and I think preferable option: to use leading and trailing underscores (e.g., _A Tale of Two Cities_). Some software (such as Slack and WhatsApp) already converts text with that form to italics, and readers will so understand it even on platforms (such as Facebook) that do not yet do so.
A. In our original answer, we were considering the problem of presenting book titles in a stylistically appropriate way on platforms that do not allow for italics. Literal underscores would be _overkill_ for most types of posts. Readers don’t usually need to know that, for example, Chicago recommends italics where this option is available. But you are right: Where it is important to communicate italics as such, underscores (known in Unicode as low lines) would be the preferred approach (just as *asterisks* would be the preferred delimiters for boldface).
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]