Q. What is the proper way of capitalizing foreign titles appearing at the end of English titles and subtitles? For example,
hypothetically, should it be “Aeneas Traveling Noctis per umbram” or “Aeneas Traveling Noctis per Umbram”? Headline style seems to conflict with Chicago recommendations for foreign titles. There doesn’t
seem to be any advice for melding the two, as far as I can tell.
A. The sentence-cased Latin title fits Chicago style more neatly, but the headline caps aren’t wrong.
(When it’s difficult to find an answer to a question like this, you can be fairly confident that there
isn’t a single “proper” way to do it.)
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I am writing a government report, and the first letters of words in the title are supposed to be capitalized. In such a case, should prepositions be capitalized? The government employee who edited my work said that along should be capitalized, but not of, and this doesn’t make any sense to me.
A. Although Chicago style lowercases prepositions (but see CMOS 8.159 for exceptions), some style guides uppercase them. Ask your editor for a style guide.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I am quoting from a document that has a lot of words in all caps, for emphasis. In my report the quote appears as a block
quote, and I feel that I should affirm that the capitalization is in the original, not added by me. Should I make this affirmation
with a parenthetical comment, or should I just leave it alone?
A. By all means, use a parenthesis to shift the embarrassment to where it belongs. “(Emphasis in original)”
is the standard disclaimer.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Our company, an art auction house, has decided to adopt sentence-style capitalization because we feel the visual flow is
easier to read. The names of sales are based on the names of our departments, e.g., “The Old Master
Paintings department will have its Old master paintings sale in June.” Is that style appropriate?
A. Sentence caps are meant to be used for titles that are in italics or in quotation marks. They don’t
work with titles of sales or departments because, without capital letters to set off an entire title, the lowercased part
of the title blurs with the rest of the sentence. If you like the “down” style,
take it all the way: “The old master paintings department will have its old master paintings sale in
June.” Otherwise, you need headline caps.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. How would you treat the title of a blog—roman with quotation marks, roman without quotation marks, or italic?
Q. In a software application that catalogues musical albums in a sidebar column for playback selection the main developer insists
on using italics for the album titles. I advised to drop the italics mainly because on today’s low-resolution
screens italic typefaces are rendered poorly. I reasoned that the CMOS advice that artwork titles should be set in italics is to be construed as a device of emphasis that sets the respective title
off from the flowing text. If the context would consist of titles only (and no surrounding text) there would not be a need
for emphasis, hence no italicization. Is this correct?
A. You make a good argument. The fact is, any time italics are unreadable, they are inappropriate. Although Chicago style is
to put titles of albums in italics, CMOS was not written primarily with web design in mind. Even in Chicago books, there are separate rules for display type. For
instance, book titles are often set in roman type on a title page. It’s probably best for you to ditch
the italics.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. When working in an electronic format that does not allow italics, how should you treat the titles of books?
A. If your text is mainly meant to convey information, you can indicate italics _like this_ or <italic>like this</italic> or
<i>like this</i>. If you want the text to display nicely, some applications allow you to use color or boldface or underlining.
A last resort is to use all caps or quotation marks.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Should “foundation” be capitalized in the following phrase? “With funding from the Ford and Simon foundations.” I thought it should be capped, since it means “from the Ford Foundation and the Simon Foundation,” but a coworker thinks otherwise.
A. By popular demand, Chicago style once again calls for uppercasing the generic term in such constructions (see, for instance, CMOS 8.53). But in the scenario you describe, it might be best to give both names in full to avoid any possible ambiguity.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Should one capitalize academic degrees? I am reading a quasi-academic journal and am wondering about the capitalization of
three words in the following sentence: “He was hoping to use his Associate of Applied Science degree.”
A. Chicago style is to lowercase the degree (including the field) in running text and whenever it’s used
generically. Generic uses (like the one in your sentence) often are introduced by “a”
or “the” or “his.” Capitalize the
name of a degree when it is displayed on a resume, business card, diploma, alumni directory, or anywhere it looks like a title
rather than a description. You can’t go too far wrong with this if you’re consistent
within a given document.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. When spelling out a proper name that is also known by an acronym, is it acceptable to capitalize more than one letter in
a word that contributes multiple letters to the acronym? To give an example, the name of an organization named Techno Hub
Innovation Kawasaki (THINK) came up in a document that I translated from Japanese to English, and the client wants to spell
the organization Techno Hub INnovation Kawasaki. Although the organization’s website itself uses INnovation,
it looks wrong to me. Am I right?
A. I don’t think readers would require the unusual capitalization in order to understand the acronym,
so I would discourage it, but if the client wants it that way and spells it that way on his website, and if the document is
some kind of commercial copy, I wouldn’t fuss about it.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]