Q. I understand that when a colon is used to separate a book title from a subtitle, the word following the colon should be capitalized. But what if we are dealing with a paragraph heading? Final Update: the End of the World as We Know It. Should the word following a colon be capitalized? I feel it should be lowercase, following the basic rules of capitalization following a colon.
A. The rules for headline capitalization apply not just to book titles but to all the items mentioned at CMOS 8.156, including “divisions of longer works (parts, chapters, sections).” So cap the word after the colon.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. A book title is written in italics, as is the title of a musical album. Chapter names and songs are set between quotation marks. If I’m correct, the thinking behind this is that a song is usually part of an album or a play or some sort of larger work. However, it wasn’t that long ago that a song was a stand-alone work, released as sheet music or as a single on a 78 or 45 rpm record. LPs and the concept of an album came to prominence in the 1960s. So what do we do with “The Pineapple Rag,” which was never part of an album? It was released originally as sheet music and possibly as a player piano roll. Throughout most of music history, the song was the major work. Some songs, like “Money” on Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, are integral parts of the album, while Bach’s Minuet in G has nothing to do with any larger work. Doesn’t it make more sense to italicize song titles? This also eliminates all the awkward quotes and commas when listing the songs in an album or play. Thoughts?
A. Your viewpoint is valid. Songs can fall into more than one category and may reasonably be styled in different ways. There are similar issues with maps, which are sometimes a single page in an atlas and sometimes published as an independent pamphlet or work of art. Adapt the style to suit the document. If italics work better for your songs in a given context, by all means use italics.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Is the word program capitalized as part of the name of a program, such as Orphan/Infant Care Program—or is it Orphan/Infant Care program? Does the rule change if it is in text or on a poster?
A. In text, program is capped only if it is part of the name of the program. In a poster headline or title, all important words may be capped.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. The “Life Style” section of a newspaper is referred to in dialogue. The dialogue is in double quotations. Should the name of the newspaper section also have a set of double quotation marks? I searched for an answer or a reliable example and could find none.
A. Chicago style leaves the titles of newspaper sections unquoted, which solves your problem. But in general, use single quotes for a quote within a quote. CMOS 13.30, 14.190, and 14.195 have the examples you’re looking for.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I’m editing company profiles for a business directory and often encounter statements like the following:
We were cited as Outstanding Exporter of the Year in 2008.
We are no. 6 in DQ’s “Best IT Employer Survey.”
Another editor placed quotation marks around “Outstanding Exporter of the Year.” How would CMOS place quotation marks in the list above?
A. In Chicago style, the titles of studies and articles are typically quoted; names of awards are not. There are gray areas, however. For instance, in your first sentence, “cited as” is very close to “quoted as,” which could justify the quotation marks. In any case, in some documents it might be preferable to treat similar items the same rather than distract with fine distinctions that give the appearance of inconsistency. This is yet another instance that calls for editing judgment.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. It has baffled me for years why the name of The New Yorker is sometimes written the New Yorker, and today I learned it is because the Chicago Manual advises it. I’m not sure why. The title of the magazine, as William Shawn used to say, is The New Yorker. To present it otherwise is to make a factual error, as it would be to print the New York Times, or the first letters of someone’s name in lowercase.
A. The books published by the University of Chicago Press regularly contain thousands of source citations. Given the impracticality of tracking down the “official” title and casing for each one, writers and editors dodge the issue by following a house style guide. The goal is to treat all titles the same way. This tactic has been so universally accepted that by now readers tend to be more outraged when two sources are treated differently than when a casing diverges from what they know to be “correct.” When you think about it, there would be no need for style manuals to rule on this issue if writers had the time and means to research whether every obscure source includes The in its title or not. And besides, not every source is as consistent or well known as the New Yorker. It’s not always possible to track down a single correct answer. Publishers can be inconsistent: even their own documents, websites, letterhead, and logos sometimes fail to agree. Long before the days of internet fact-checking, Chicago settled on lowercasing and printing in roman type the in the name of a periodical. If this means our books are filled with factual errors, they are at least serenely consistent, and few readers know exactly where the errors are.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. If our publication follows your style of italicizing the titles of most works (e.g., books), what would you recommend we
do in cases when that title must appear in the headline of an article? Italicization is not possible in our headline fields,
and our style for quotation marks in headlines is single quotation marks. Single quotes would likely improve clarity in many
cases, but it may also be best to use quotation marks only when needed for clarity. I would appreciate some reinforcement
as we try to pin this down for good.
A. Since you are more or less limiting your choices for styling titles in headlines to (1) using single quotation marks, (2)
not using quotation marks, and (3) using them inconsistently, I vote for number 1.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I am editing an article, and the terms “Cause of Death,” “Manner
of Death,” “Natural,” “Accident,”
“Suicide,” “Homicide,” and “Undetermined”
are all capitalized. If the term is reused later in the article, e.g., “This is a Natural death”
and “There has been no finding as to the Manner and possible Cause of death,”
should I capitalize “Natural,” “Manner,”
and “Cause” in this latter usage?
A. This type of capping is antiquated and unfortunate. As common nouns and adjectives, the terms should be lowercased. They
may be italicized on first mention, but afterward they should appear as regular words—no italics or
quotation marks or caps.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. According to CMOS, the names of major sporting events are capitalized. But none of the examples provided include major sporting events made up of multiple games. For the World Series, for example, would it be Game Four of the 1948 World Series, or game four of the 1948 World Series?
A. Either way is fine, but Chicago style prefers to lowercase when there’s a choice, and we also like to use numerals for enumerations, so we would probably refer to game 4 of the World Series, in the way that we refer to chapter 1 of a book.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. A manuscript I’m working on right now features a quote in running text which refers to the twentieth
century. Since the quote is from the New York Times, it says “20th century”—which does not match the number
style for the rest of our book. Is spelling out the number a permissible change to the quote?
A. No, this is not the sort of thing you should change in a quotation. But don’t worry about appearing
inconsistent; readers won’t hold you responsible. They understand that you weren’t
available to copyedit everything that was ever written.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]