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.