![]() AP and APA, for example, capitalize words of more than three letters, including prepositions Chicago and MLA lowercase all prepositions regardless of length. ![]() (A title like “Teachers According More Time to Students,” in which “According” functions as a verb and is therefore capitalized, would be hard to find.) Note that other styles capitalize prepositions based on length alone. And the ones that occur most often (like “according to,” “considering,” and “during”) normally function as prepositions, which makes the job of an editor following Chicago style a little easier. Most so-called participial prepositions (verb forms that can also function as prepositions)- according (to), assuming, barring, concerning, considering, during, notwithstanding, owing (to), provided, regarding, respecting, and speaking (of), among others-rarely appear in titles of works. For example, we’d write The World according to Garp. Chicago lowercases all prepositions in titles, including words that aren’t always prepositions. (If we did, we might say to capitalize the first and last words in a quoted phrase within a title.) Rarer still would be a title that featured “to” as an adverb-as in the phrase “come to” in the sense of “regain consciousness.” You’ll have to take our word for it that we’d capitalize the T in that case.Ī. Here, well be describing the rules for writing in title case, as outlined in The. “ ‘To Regulate,’ Not ‘To Prohibit’: Limiting the Commerce Power”ĬMOS doesn’t cover that scenario. Title case is used for titles, headings, subheadings, and headlines. Here’s one, in the title of an article from volume 2012 of the journal Supreme Court Review: “If You Asked Me To” (infinitive marker )Įxceptions in the middle of a title would be rare. To Kill a Mockingbird (infinitive marker) “Midnight Train to Georgia” (where “to” is a preposition)īut, when “to” is the first or last word, So,īorn to Run (where “to” marks the infinitive) The first eleven editions of CMOS said to capitalize all “important” words in a title: “nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, first words, and last words.” Starting with the twelfth edition, that advice was expanded to clarify that “verbs” did not extend to the “to” in infinitives, which should remain lowercase in titles (see CMOS 8.169 in the current, or seventeenth, edition). It certainly doesn’t merit capitalization in titles. Whoever decided that “to” should be considered part of the infinitive verb form in English has caused more trouble than such a small word is worth (see “infinitives, split”). The preposition “into” wouldn’t normally merit a capital I without the colon, and the absence of a colon does seem a little odd, but we’d allow both exceptions in the spirit of maintaining intergalactic harmony.Ī. CMOS would therefore treat “Star Trek” as the main title and “Into Darkness” as the subtitle-adding a colon between the two.īut we know that- after much debate-the world seems to have settled on Star Trek Into Darkness (capital I, no colon). Both the movie posters and the title screen itself feature all-caps “STAR TREK” on its own line “INTO DARKNESS” is on the line below that, in a type size that differentiates it from the line above. For example, Chicago style would normally call for Star Trek: Into Darkness as the title of that 2013 film. Chicago style imposes title case for the main title and adds a colon (see CMOS 8.165). There’s no colon between title and subtitle. On that book’s cover and title page, the main title is in all caps, and the subtitle is in title case. Or there’s The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor-the Truth and the Turmoil, by Tina Brown (Crown, 2022). Chicago style, as we’ve just seen, would apply title case (and italics). title case).įor example, both the cover and title page for Finding Me, the memoir by Viola Davis (HarperOne, 2022), feature all caps: FINDING ME. Most advise applying some variation of headline style (a.k.a. In (almost) all cases, Chicago style (or whatever style you follow) would take precedence when such a title is mentioned in the text. It’s not uncommon for the title of a book, article, or other work to use a capitalization style that’s different from the one recommended by Chicago. prepositions, regardless of length, except when they’re used adverbially or adjectivally, when they’re stressed, or when they make up part of a Latin expression used adverbially or adjectivally: De Facto, In Vitro, etc.A.For headlines in news releases and Inside UW–Madison, capitalize only the first word, proper names, and proper nouns. The cover of On Wisconsin follows sentence-style capitalization rather than headline style. CMS 8.59 is recapped below CMS 8.160 gives examples CMS 8.161 discusses hyphenated compounds in headline-style titles. See the lists below as guides to using lowercase or uppercase when these words appear in headlines and subheads.
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