Q. Good morning! I have a question about CMOS 8.183 (18th ed.). It says that a very long poetic work is usually italicized but that shorter poems are set in roman and enclosed in quotation marks. What is the cutoff point that distinguishes a longish short poem from a truly long poem? At what point do you stop putting poems in quotation marks and start putting them in italics? Thank you for your wonderful Q&A section!
Q. Could you clarify which texts—specifically sacred and ancient ones—should be written in roman type rather than italics? Is there a cutoff date for something to be considered “ancient”? Does it matter if an ancient text is sacred, literary, or philosophical? Is there some authority that rules whether a text is considered sacred? For example, some consider the Analects as sacred, but that title is widely italicized. Please advise.
A. Some of the advice in CMOS is there mainly to acknowledge how the rest of the world does things rather than to set a rule. Paragraphs 8.183 and (for the second question) 8.104 are in this category. Together, they amount to something like this: Note: Some titles may be treated differently from what we advise elsewhere. Here are a few examples.
This advice is supposed to warn people that one doesn’t generally refer, for example, to The Bible or Dante’s “Inferno” or Shakespeare’s Sonnets—stylings that might seem right based on the advice elsewhere in CMOS. Instead, that would be the Bible and Dante’s Inferno and Shakespeare’s Sonnets—not because we say so but because that’s the convention. And there’s no magic cutoff point. If the Analects of Confucius are normally italicized in your readings, then use italics.
The same thing goes for poems. Is it “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” or The Rime of the Ancient Mariner? That one could go either way, but if you’re an editor, you know what to do: Choose the form that makes the most sense to you and be consistent about it.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. When writing out a citation on paper, should you underline instead of italicize?
A. Though you could try to approximate the look of italics with your handwriting, the convention for handwritten text is the same as it was in the days of the typewriter: underlining means italics. (The usual way to add underlining on a typewriter was to backspace over the letters to be underlined and then repeatedly press the underscore key, or _, the same key that’s typically paired with a hyphen on English-language QWERTY keyboards designed for use with desktops and laptops.)
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Does CMOS have any suggestions for how to format the title of a playlist? Should it be put in quotes? Thank you!
A. Though CMOS doesn’t currently cover this topic, the title of a playlist can usually be placed in quotation marks (and capitalized in title case): “Copyeditor’s Baroque 1”; “Favorite Rarities”; “Walking Mix Fast.”
Though playlists are like albums (whose titles are italicized in Chicago style, as in Kind of Blue), they aren’t formally published like albums are, something italics might suggest. CMOS makes a similar distinction for the titles of theses and dissertations relative to published books; see CMOS 14.113.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I would like to know if boat names (smaller vessels, not big ships) should be italicized in fiction. I am editing a middle-grade novel that includes mention of a lot of boat names, and the italics feel wrong in the dialogue. Is there a case for italicizing the names in the narrative but not in dialogue?
A. If Victor Hugo can decide against applying italics to the name of a large vessel, you can do it for smaller ones. In Les Travailleurs de la mer, published in Paris in 1866 and in London that same year (as Toilers of the Sea, an English translation by W. Moy Thomas), the narrator explains that, “in spite of typographical usage,” references to the steamship Durande won’t be italicized (or souligner in French):
Having created his steamboat, Lethierry had christened it; he had called it Durande—‘La Durande.’ We will speak of her henceforth by no other name; we will claim the liberty also, in spite of typographical usage, of not italicizing this name Durande; conforming in this to the notion of Mess Lethierry, in whose eyes La Durande was almost a living person. (English ed., 1:132)
Après avoir créé ce bateau à vapeur, Lethierry l’avait baptisé. Il l’avait nommé Durande. La Durande, — nous ne l’appellerons plus autrement. On nous permettra également, quel que soit l’usage typographique, de ne point souligner ce nom Durande, nous conformant en cela à la pensée de mess Lethierry pour qui la Durande était une personne. (French ed., 1:136)
Note that the French edition uses italics to refer to the name Durande (“ce nom Durande”) but not to that name when it’s used for the ship (“la Durande”); the English translation doesn’t apply italics in either case. In the latest Chicago style, italics would be applied to “the word Durande”—and to “the Durande” as a ship—but not when referring to “the name Durande” (see CMOS 7.66 and 8.117).
So if it seems fussy or artificial or otherwise wrong to use italics for the names of the smaller boats mentioned in the dialogue of your book, you can take a page from Victor Hugo and go without them (assuming your author agrees). But if you do that, you might consider removing italics for boat names in the narrative also. Assuming you’d apply italics to the title of a book or the like whether it occurs in narration or dialogue, it’s probably best to be equally consistent for other categories. Even your middle-grade readers are likely to appreciate that.
For the capital T in Travailleurs (an alternative to strict sentence case for French titles), see CMOS 11.30.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I copyedit a technical journal, and I have a question about how CMOS would handle the term “Fortune 500.” Is “Fortune” (as the name of a publication) set in italics while “500” is not, or is “Fortune 500” treated as a standalone brand or fixed term akin to a trademark, where “Fortune” would be set roman? Thanks.
A. That term could go either way, but we’d refer to it as the Fortune 500, without italics for “Fortune,” following CMOS 8.174: “When the title of a newspaper or periodical is part of the name of a building, organization, prize, or the like, it is not italicized.”
The Fortune 500 (an annual ranking of the top 500 companies in the United States published by Fortune magazine) is analogous to a prize, and the fact that the word “Fortune” is part of the name of the list is what determines our choice.
The Billboard Hot 100 presents a similar case. Some editors would style that as the Billboard Hot 100. But we’d use italics only if referring to that list in terms of the magazine that publishes it, as in Billboard magazine’s Hot 100, or Billboard’s Hot 100 for short.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Does a term following the word “called” need to be in italics or quotation marks—or neither? For example, “a series of bends called meanders.”
A. CMOS takes a relatively hands-off approach to terms introduced by called, known as, referred to as, and the like. The idea is that these are simply extensions of the linking verb to be:
Those are potatoes.
or, more specifically,
Those are called potatoes.
But if you want to draw attention to such a term for any reason, you can use italics (or quotation marks). CMOS does this, for example, in certain passages in chapter 5 where we wanted to emphasize grammar-related vocabulary—as in the following sentence from CMOS 5.180:
A phrasal preposition, sometimes called a complex preposition, is two or more separate words used as a prepositional unit.
For the related issue of what to do following so-called (where quotation marks are considered unnecessary in Chicago style), see CMOS 7.62.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. In CMOS 8.117, why are Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Polar Lander not italicized? Aren’t they the names of specific spacecraft?
A. Italics are normally reserved for creative as opposed to descriptive names. Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Polar Lander are the names of specific vehicles launched by NASA, but they’re both based on generic descriptions: The first name refers to a spacecraft that was launched to do a global survey of Mars (while orbiting that planet), and the second names a spacecraft designed to explore the south polar region of that same planet (after having landed on its surface).
Phoenix also refers to a specific spacecraft that was sent to Mars, but “Phoenix” is a name, not a description, so it gets italics (including when used with a generic description, as in “NASA’s Phoenix Mars lander”).
Trivia: Though italics for names are now usually limited to ships and other named vessels, it was once relatively common to find the names of people and places in italics, as in two influential eighteenth-century English novels: Samuel Richardson’s Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded (vol. 4, London, 1742, via Internet Archive) and Henry Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (vol. 1, 1749, via HathiTrust).
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. If a word is used as a word but presented in all caps (or small caps), should it still be italicized or set in quotation marks (per CMOS 7.66)? For example: Fill in the squares with the letters that spell out BINGO. Or: Fill in the squares with the letters B, I, N, G, and O. In the latter case, the letters would be italicized. But putting the letters and the word in all caps and also italicizing them feels like overkill to me. It looks hideous. HELP!
A. Don’t worry, your editorial instincts align with ours. Capital letters, like italics and quotation marks, are very good at distinguishing a letter, word, or phrase from its surroundings. So unless you’re quoting from a specific source, please feel free to refer to the letters in bingo exactly as you’ve done in your question (both individually and when combined to form a word). Such an exception would be similar to the ones for the letter grades A–F (see CMOS 7.68) and the expression “the three R’s” (note the apostrophe; see 7.15 in the 18th ed. of CMOS).
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I am the managing editor of a business journal. Many of the authors I edit put the word “learn” in quotation marks when it applies to AI. For example, “The algorithm can be trained to ‘learn’ how people interact.” Does CMOS approve of this usage, or does it prefer to allow AI to learn like the rest of us, free from quotation marks?
A. CMOS would approve (or rather its editors would), but only if the author needs to make a point about the nature of learning and isn’t simply trying to be clever, and provided the device isn’t overused (once is usually enough). A bit of editorial pushback along those lines might get your authors to drop the quotation marks. If that doesn’t work, you might remind them that it’s called artificial intelligence for a reason. Using so-called scare quotes around learn (or respond or any other word normally associated with living beings) would tend to belabor the obvious. (For more on scare quotes, see CMOS 7.57.)
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. If direct internal dialogue is set in italics, should the comma before the dialogue tag be set in italics or roman? CMOS 6.2 is very fuzzy on this. For example: “I lied, he thought, but maybe she will forgive me.” Imagine that the dialogue itself is set in italics. Should the first comma be italicized?
A. Good question! The comma after “lied” would be required both with the speaker tag (“I lied, he thought”) and without (“I lied, but maybe . . .”), so it could be said to belong to both the dialogue and the narrative. But adding quotation marks (as if the dialogue were speech) will suggest an answer:
“I lied,” he thought, “but maybe she will forgive me.”
becomes
I lied, he thought, but maybe she will forgive me.
The comma and period that are inside the closing quotation marks in the first version are in italics in the second version, whereas the comma after thought stays in roman. The difference is minuscule (without the bold for italics, would anyone notice?), and our solution is arbitrary. But it’s easy enough to understand and apply, so maybe we’ll make it a rule someday.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]