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.
A. CMOS doesn’t treat concert titles, but you could style them exactly as you did or put quotation marks around
them, as you would the title of a lecture.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
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.
A. Unless there is some difference in official top-secret legal lingo (which would not surprise me), “no”
= “not” in this phrase.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
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)?
A. Just between you and me, I suspect many editors struggle with these subtleties. I assume that CMOS takes its lead from Merriam-Webster, which certainly leaves me scratching my head. A good strategy is to ask the author if he or she capped and lowercased according to a plan, and if not, then you are justified in styling as you think best—perhaps lowercasing the adjective but capping “the Continent.” Just keep a record in your style sheet.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. How should I treat names of apps?
A. Treat apps and software with initial caps, as you would any commercial product name. For examples, see CMOS 8.155.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
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?
A. In running text, Chicago style lowercases titles but caps the names of departments: Mary Smith, director of Human Resources.
On a résumé, business card, diploma, door plaque, or such, your comma is appropriate
and the title may be capped: Mary Smith, Director, Human Resources.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. My professor has requested that one of our assignments have the titles of tables in headline-style capitalization. What does
this mean?
A. Headline style capitalizes the important words in a title: Six Reasons Susan Buys Shoes. In sentence-style capping, only
the first word and proper nouns are capped: Six reasons Susan buys shoes.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
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.
A. Although computer automation favors capping all the words in a title because it’s easy to do, traditionally
only the important words (and not prepositions) are capped. There are exceptions; CMOS lays them out in its section on headline style.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
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?
A. We’re cool with italic lowercase mo. Readers are used to taking in small words. Clarify occasionally with “mo magazine” to aid readers in recognizing the little word whenever it appears.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
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”?
A. Okay, this is intriguing: these two questions arrived on the same day a few hours apart. Do we have dueling colleagues? Friends
who made a bet? Or maybe—tragically—soul mates who don’t
even know each other and never will? The answer is that Chicago style lowercases the number of the month unless it’s
a holiday like the Fourth of July. Will one of you write to explain this mystery when it’s posted? Let’s
hope for an update next month.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
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.
A. Gulp—a PhD in English lit? Well, here goes: Although “concerning”
and “according” are participles, that doesn't stop them from forming prepositions.
(You can confirm this in a dictionary.) In the title cited, “concerning” is a
preposition with the object “Gospel,” and “according to”
is a preposition with the object “Matthew,” so according to Chicago style they
are lowercased. Many publishers follow a different guideline for title casing, however, by which all words over a certain
length are uppercased, so it's not surprising if you see these prepositions uppercased in titles.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]