Chicago Style Workout 29: Titles in Running Text

/ August 28, 2018

Updated January 25, 2025

Australian sprinter Eileen Wearne

Sprint!

This workout focuses on paragraphs 8.158–69 in CMOS 18. Advanced editors might tackle the questions cold; learners can study that section of the Manual before answering the questions.

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Note: Style guides sometimes disagree. These questions are designed to test knowledge of The Chicago Manual of Style.

Now updated to refer and link to the 18th edition.

Chicago Style Workout 29: Titles in Running Text

1. Titles mentioned or cited in text or notes are usually capitalized in title case (also called headline style).
2. Titles of works from languages other than English are usually capitalized in sentence case.
3. In Chicago style for title case, prepositions of five letters or more are capitalized.
4. Prepositions in titles are capitalized when they are used adverbially or adjectivally (“The On Button”) (“Turn On, Tune In, and Enjoy”).
5. In Chicago style, the second element in a hyphenated spelled-out number or fraction is lowercased in a title (“Twenty-one Today”) (“Two-thirds There”).
6. In title case, if the first element in a hyphenated compound is merely a prefix or combining form that could not stand by itself as a word (anti, pre, etc.), the second element is lowercased unless it is a proper noun or proper adjective ( “Anti-intellectual Pursuits”) (“Does Pre-authorization Save Time?”).
7. When a direct quotation of a sentence or an independent clause is used as a title, title case may be imposed, even for longer quotations (“I Will Not Allow Books to Prove Anything”: Establishing Truth in Fiction).
8. When an em dash rather than a colon is used in a title, what follows the em dash is not normally considered to be a subtitle, and the first word is not necessarily capitalized (“Chicago—a Metropolitan Smorgasbord”).
9. When a title is referred to in text or notes or listed in a bibliography or reference list, capitalization may be changed to title case or sentence case, as applicable.
10. When a title is referred to or cited, a hyphen in a number or other range in the original source should not be changed to an en dash.

 

Photo: Eileen Wearne training at Manual Arts High School, Los Angeles, 1932, photographer unknown. From the collection of the State Library of New South Wales (via Flickr).

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