Q. In CMOS 8.161 (on hyphenated compounds in headline-style titles), the word “Speaking” in the example “Non-English-Speaking Representatives” is capitalized, going against rule 3. Since “non-” is a prefix and cannot stand alone as a word, shouldn’t “speaking” be lowercase? Thank you for your explanation.
A. The point of rule 3 is this: If the unhyphenated form might conceivably be spelled as one word, then use lowercase for subsequent elements:
Are Antihistamines Overprescribed? (lowercase h in “histamines”)
Are Anti-intellectuals Overrated? (lowercase i in “intellectuals”)
But “NonEnglishspeaking” would never be correct, so “Speaking” needs to be capitalized. For hyphens with prefixes, see CMOS 7.89, section 4.