22.1.1 People, Places, and Organizations
22.1.2 Historical Events, Cultural Terms, and Designations of Time
This chapter offers general guidelines for presenting names, special terms, and titles of works, including advice on when to use capital letters and when to use quotation marks or italic type (as opposed to regular roman type) to set off words, phrases, or titles.
If you are writing a thesis or dissertation, your department or university may have specific requirements for presenting names, special terms, and titles. Those requirements are usually available from the office of theses and dissertations. If you are writing a class paper, your instructor may also ask you to follow certain principles for presenting such items. Review these requirements before you prepare your paper. They take precedence over the guidelines suggested here. For style guides in various disciplines, see the bibliography.
Proper nouns, or names, are always capitalized, but it is sometimes difficult to distinguish a name from a generic term. This section covers the most common cases. For more detailed information, see chapter 8 of The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition (2010).
In text, names are normally presented in roman type, but there are a few exceptions noted in 22.1.3.
In general, capitalize the first letter in each element of the names of specific people, places, and organizations. However, personal names that contain particles (such as de and van) or compound last names may vary in capitalization. When in doubt, consult Webster’s Biographical Dictionary or another reliable authority. Prepositions (of) and conjunctions (and) that are parts of names are usually lowercase, as is the when it precedes a name. For possessive forms of names, see 20.2. For abbreviations with names, see 24.2. For names with numbers, see 23.1.6.
Eleanor Roosevelt
W. E. B. Du Bois
Ludwig van Beethoven
Victoria Sackville-West
Chiang Kai-shek
Sierra Leone
Central America
New York City
the Atlantic Ocean
the Republic of Lithuania
the United States Congress
the State Department
the European Union
the University of North Carolina
the Honda Motor Company
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
the University of Chicago Press
the National Conference of Community and Justice
the Roman Catholic Church
the Allied Expeditionary Force
A professional title that immediately precedes a personal name is treated as part of the name and should be capitalized. If you use the title alone or after the personal name, it becomes a generic term and should be lowercased. The same principle applies to other generic terms that are part of place or organization names.
President Harry Truman announced
the president announced
Professors Harris and Wilson wrote
the professors wrote
next to the Indian Ocean
next to the ocean
students at Albion College
students at the college
Names of ethnic and national groups are also capitalized. Terms denoting socioeconomic level, however, are not. (For hyphenation of compounds of both types, see 20.3.2. For plurals of tribal names, such as Hopi, see 20.1.1.)
Arab Americans
Latinos
the middle class
white-collar workers
Capitalize adjectives derived from names, unless they have lost their literal associations with particular persons or places and have become part of everyday language.
Machiavellian scheme
Roman and Arabic art
french fries
roman and arabic numerals
The names of many historical periods and events are traditionally capitalized; more generic terms usually are not, unless they include names. Follow the conventions of your discipline.
the Bronze Age
the Depression
the Industrial Revolution
Prohibition
the Seven Years’ War
ancient Rome
the nineteenth century
the Shang dynasty
the colonial period
the baby boom
Nouns and adjectives designating cultural styles, movements, and schools are generally capitalized only when derived from names or when they need to be distinguished from generic terms (as in Stoicism). Again, follow the conventions of your discipline.
classical
impressionism
modernism
deconstruction
Aristotelian reasoning
Dadaism
Hudson River school
Romanesque architecture
Names of days of the week, months, and holidays are capitalized, but names of seasons are not. For more on date systems, see 23.3.
Tuesday
September
Independence Day
spring
Other types of names also follow specific patterns for capitalization, and some require italics.
■ Academic courses and subjects. Capitalize the names of specific courses but not of general subjects or fields of study, except for the names of languages.
Archaeology 101
Topics in Victorian Literature
art history
English literature
■ Acts, treaties, and government programs. Capitalize the formal or accepted titles of acts, treaties, government programs, and similar documents or entities, but lowercase informal or generic titles.
the United States (or US) Constitution
the Treaty of Versailles
Head Start
the due process clause
the treaty
■ Brand names. Capitalize the brand names of products, but do not use the symbol ® or ™ after such a name. Unless you are discussing a specific product, however, use a generic term instead of a brand name.
Coca-Cola
Xerox
iPhone
cola
photocopy
smartphone
■ Electronic technology. Capitalize names of computer hardware and software, networks, browsers, systems, and languages. Generic terms (such as web), however, may be lowercased when used alone or in combination.
Apple OS X Lion
Google Chrome
the Internet; the net
the World Wide Web; the web; website
■ Legal cases. Capitalize and italicize the names of legal cases; italicize the v. (versus). You may shorten the case name after a full reference to it (usually to the name of the plaintiff or the nongovernmental party). For citations of legal cases, see 17.9.7 and 19.9.7.
First reference
Miranda v. Arizona
United States v. Carlisle
Subsequent references
Miranda
Carlisle
■ Ships, aircraft, and other vessels. Capitalize and italicize the names of ships, aircraft, and the like. If the names are preceded by an abbreviation such as USS (United States ship) or HMS (Her [or His] Majesty’s ship), do not italicize these abbreviations or use the word ship in addition to the name.
USS Constitution
HMS Saranac
Spirit of St. Louis
the space shuttle Atlantis
■ Plants and animals. In papers in the humanities and social sciences, do not capitalize the names of plants and animals unless they include other proper nouns, such as geographical names. Binomial Latin species names should be italicized, with the genus name capitalized and the species name (or specific epithet) lowercase. The names of phyla, orders, and such should be in roman type. For papers in the sciences, follow the conventions of your discipline.
rhesus monkey
Rocky Mountain sheep
Rosa caroliniana
Chordata
Some special terms require use of italics, quotation marks, and capitalization.
Italicize isolated words and phrases in foreign languages likely to be unfamiliar to readers of English, and capitalize them as in their language. (If you are unfamiliar with the capitalization principles of a language, consult a reliable authority such as chapter 11 of The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition [2010].) For titles of works in foreign languages, see 22.3.1.
This leads to the idea of Übermensch and to the theory of the acte gratuit and surrealism.
Do not italicize foreign terms familiar enough to appear in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.
de facto
vis-à-vis
pasha
eros
Do not italicize foreign names or personal titles that accompany them.
Padre Pio
the Académie Française
the Puerto del Sol
If you define a foreign term, put the definition in parentheses or quotation marks, either following the term in the text or in a note.
The usual phrase was ena tuainu-iai, “I wanted to eat.”
According to Sartrean ontology, man is always de trop (in excess).
For longer quotations from a foreign language, use roman type. Italicize the quotation as a whole or any words within it only if they are italicized in the original. Enclose the quotation in quotation marks within the text or use a block quotation following the principles in 25.2.
The confusion of le pragmatisme is traced to the supposed failure to distinguish “les propriétés de la valeur en général” from the incidental.
To emphasize key terms that you define, italicize them on their first use; thereafter use roman type. You can use quotation marks (called scare quotes) to alert readers that you are using a term in a nonstandard or ironic way. When overused, both techniques become less effective.
The two chief tactics of this group, obstructionism and misinformation, require careful analysis.
Government “efficiency” resulted in a huge deficit.
Italicize a term when you refer to it as a term.
The term critical mass is more often used metaphorically than literally.
How did she define the word existential?
but
A critical mass of students took existential philosophy.
Italicize letters referred to as letters, and present them in lowercase. Letters used to denote grades and to identify exemplars should be roman and capitalized. For plural forms of letters used in these ways, see 20.1.2.
Many of the place-names there begin with the letters h and k.
In her senior year, she received an A and six Bs.
Imagine a group of interconnected persons: A knows B, B knows C, and C knows D.
When you cite a work, present its title exactly as it appears in the original work or, if the original is unavailable, in a reliable authority.
Always preserve the original spelling (including hyphenation) in such titles, even if it does not conform to current American usage as described in chapter 20. See 17.1.2 for some permissible changes to the punctuation of titles, such as the use of a colon between a title and a subtitle, and the addition of a comma before dates.
Academic convention prescribes that titles follow specific patterns of capitalization and the use of italics or quotation marks (or neither), regardless of how they appear in the original.
Titles have two patterns of capitalization: headline style and sentence style. Present most titles in headline style. For foreign-language titles, use sentence style.
Both citation styles described in this manual now prescribe headline-style capitalization for English-language titles (a change from previous editions). See 16.1.3 and 18.1.3.
Also use headline-style capitalization for the title of your paper and the titles of any parts or chapters within it unless your discipline prefers sentence style (see A.1.5).
22.3.1.1 HEADLINE-STYLE CAPITALIZATION. Headline-style capitalization is intended to distinguish titles clearly from surrounding text. In this style, capitalize the first letter of the first and last words of the title and subtitle and all other words, except as follows:
■ Do not capitalize articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, for), or the word to or as except as the first or last word in the title or subtitle.
■ Do not capitalize prepositions (of, in, at, above, under, and so forth) unless they are used as adverbs (up in Look Up) or adjectives (on in The On Button).
■ Capitalize the second part (or subsequent parts) of a hyphenated compound unless it is an article, preposition, or coordinating conjunction (and, but, or, nor, for), or a modifier such as sharp or flat following a musical key; or unless the first part is a prefix (anti, pre, and so forth). (Remember to follow the original hyphenation of a title even if it differs from the principles discussed in 20.3.)
■ Lowercase the second part of a species name, such as fulvescens in Acipenser fulvescens, even if it is the last word in a title or subtitle (see also 22.1.3).
■ Do not capitalize parts of proper nouns that are normally in lowercase, as described in 22.1.1 (van in Ludwig van Beethoven).
The Economic Effects of the Civil War in the Mid-Atlantic States
To Have and to Hold: A Twenty-First-Century View of Marriage
All That Is True: The Life of Vincent van Gogh, 1853–90
Four Readings of the Gospel according to Matthew
Self-Government and the Re-establishment of a New World Order
Global Warming: What We Are Doing about It Today
Still Life with Oranges
From Homo erectus to Homo sapiens: A Black-and-White History
E-flat Concerto
Although many short words are lowercase in this style, length does not determine capitalization. You must capitalize short verbs (is, are), adjectives (new), personal pronouns (it, we), and relative pronouns (that), because they are not among the exceptions listed above. Use lowercase for long prepositions (according), since prepositions are among the exceptions.
Two kinds of titles should not be presented in headline style even if you use it for all other titles:
■ For titles in languages other than English, use sentence-style capitalization (see 22.3.1.2).
■ For titles of works published in the eighteenth century (1700s) or earlier, retain the original capitalization (and spelling), except that words spelled out in all capital letters should be given with an initial capital only.
A Treatise of morall philosophy Contaynyge the sayings of the wyse
22.3.1.2 SENTENCE-STYLE CAPITALIZATION. Sentence-style capitalization is a simpler, though less distinct, way of presenting titles than headline style. In this style, capitalize only the first letter of the first word of the title and subtitle and any proper nouns and proper adjectives thereafter.
Seeing and selling late-nineteenth-century Japan
Natural crisis: Symbol and imagination in the mid-American farm crisis
Religious feminism: A challenge from the National Organization for Women
Starry night
Unless your discipline says otherwise, reserve sentence style for titles of works in foreign languages.
Note that foreign languages have different conventions for capitalization. For example, German nouns are generally capitalized, whereas German adjectives, even those derived from proper nouns, are not. If you are uncertain about the conventions of a particular language, consult a reliable authority.
Speculum Romanae magnificentiae
Historia de la Orden de San Gerónimo
Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte
Phénoménologie et religion: Structures de I’institution chrétienne
Most titles of works are set off from the surrounding text by italics or quotation marks, depending on the type of work. The guidelines listed here apply not only to titles used in text but also to most titles in source citations (see chapters 15–19).
The examples below are presented with headline-style capitalization, but the guidelines also apply to titles with sentence-style capitalization (see 22.3.1.2).
22.3.2.1 ITALICS. Italicize the titles of most longer works, including the types listed here. An initial the should be roman and lowercase before titles of periodicals, or when it is not considered part of the title. For parts of these works and shorter works of the same type, see 22.3.2.2.
■ books (Culture and Anarchy, The Chicago Manual of Style)
■ plays (A Winter’s Tale) and very long poems, especially those of book length (Dante’s Inferno)
■ journals (Signs), magazines (Time), newspapers (the New York Times), and blogs (Dot Earth)
■ long musical compositions (The Marriage of Figaro) or titles of albums (Plastic Beach by Gorillaz)
■ paintings (the Mona Lisa), sculptures (Michelangelo’s David), and other works of art, including photographs (Ansel Adam’s North Dome)
■ movies (Citizen Kane) and television (Sesame Street) and radio programs (All Things Considered)
22.3.2.2 QUOTATION MARKS. Enclose in quotation marks, but do not italicize, the title of a shorter work, whether or not it is part of a longer work (such as those listed in 22.3.2.1).
■ chapters (“The Later Years”) or other titled parts of books
■ short stories (“The Dead”), short poems (“The Housekeeper”), and essays (“Of Books”)
■ articles or other features in journals (“The Function of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America”), magazines (“Who Should Lead the Supreme Court?”), newspapers (“Election Comes Down to the Wire”), and websites or blogs (“An Ice Expert Muses on Greenhouse Heat”)
■ individual episodes of television programs (“The Opposite”)
■ short musical compositions (“The Star-Spangled Banner”) and recordings (“All You Need Is Love”)
Also use quotation marks and roman type for titles of whole works that have not been formally published, including the following:
■ theses and dissertations (“A Study of Kant’s Early Works”)
■ lectures and papers presented at meetings (“Voice and Inequality: The Transformation of American Civic Democracy”)
■ titled documents in manuscript collections (“A Map of the Southern Indian District of North America”)
22.3.2.3 NEITHER. Capitalize but do not use italics or quotation marks with these special types of titles:
■ book series (Studies in Legal History)
■ manuscript collections (Egmont Manuscripts)
■ scriptures (the Bible) and other revered works (the Upanishads), as well as versions of the Bible (the King James Version) and its books (Genesis; see 24.6 for a complete list)
■ musical works referred to by their genre (Symphony no. 41, Cantata BWV 80), though the popular titles for such works should be italicized (the Jupiter Symphony) or placed in quotation marks (“Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott”) depending on their length, as noted above
■ websites (Google Maps, Facebook, Apple.com, the Internet Movie Database, IMDb), though exceptions may be made for sites that are analogous to a type of work listed in 22.3.2.1 (Wikipedia, the Huffington Post)
Treat generic terms for parts of books or other works as you would any other word. Do not capitalize them or use italics or quotation marks unless you would do the same for an ordinary word (such as at the beginning of a sentence). If a part includes a number, give it in arabic numerals, regardless of its appearance in the original work (see 23.1.8).
in Lionel Trilling’s preface
as discussed in chapters 4 and 5
a comprehensive bibliography
killed off in act 3, scene 2
Preserve any punctuation that is part of a title when using the title in a sentence (see 17.1.2). If the title is used as a restrictive clause or in another position in the sentence that would normally be followed by a comma (see 21.2), add the comma.
Love, Loss, and What I Wore was later adapted for an off-Broadway play.
but
Her favorite book, Love, Loss, and What I Wore, is an autobiography recounted largely through drawings.
Punctuation within a title should not affect any punctuation called for by the surrounding sentence. One exception: omit a terminal period after a title ending in a question mark or an exclamation point. See also 21.12.2.
“Are You a Doctor?” is the fifth story in Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?