Q. What is the CMOS ruling on the following: “esports” or “eSports”? Are esports games (e.g., Call of Duty: Warzone) italicized or put in quotes? Or neither?
A. Chicago style would call for “e-sports,” with a hyphen, usage that extends to all other e-words with the exception of “email” and any trade names like “eBay” that don’t use a hyphen. The title of a video game, whether or not it is considered an e-sport, and whether it’s the name of the series or an individual game in that series, would be in italics: Call of Duty: Warzone, the Call of Duty series. For hyphens, see CMOS 7.89 (section 3, under “e”); for video games, see CMOS 8.190.