Q. I’m looking for confirmation on how to capitalize a word in a title that has a portion of the word in parentheses—e.g., Peter Adey, “If Mobility Is Everything Then It Is Nothing: Towards a Relational Politics of (Im)mobilities.” Is “(Im)mobilities” OK as is, rather than “(Im)Mobilities” (which looks odd to me)? Thanks!
A. If something looks odd to you, there’s a chance it will look odd to others (which is why it’s a good idea to take any objection to something in your work seriously, even if you end up keeping things as is). In case it helps, we think the version with the capital M looks weird, so as far as we’re concerned, your hunch is right: “(Im)mobilities” is the way to go.
And don’t be misled by the Chicago citation generated via the “Cite this article” link at the Taylor & Francis page for the Adey article. It’s clear that the initial caps in the article title in that author-date citation have been applied automatically (overriding the lowercase in the original title for “is” and “it” but going a step too far next to the parenthesis).