Q. My organization holds a lot of events, and we refer to them often on our website and in our member newsletter. Some are large programs (Last Remaining Seats film series); others are one-time events (Haunted Scavenger Hunt). In trying to determine how to format event titles, the closest comparison I found in CMOS was titles of exhibitions, which should be italicized (our events are more like museum exhibitions than world’s fairs). Would you agree that we should italicize all events, regardless of their size or duration?
A. Exhibitions are a special exception in CMOS because often they include a published catalog of the same title, and the confusion seemed to cause endless difficulty for writers. Your events are perhaps more akin to sporting events (CMOS 8.78), courses of study (8.86), or even holidays (8.89), so style them as you did in your query, with headline caps. If some events are lectures (8.87), you can put quotation marks around their titles.