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A community for copyeditors, proofreaders, indexers, medical editors, and language lovers.

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Post style guidelines

When posting, please follow the style principles of the Chicago Manual of Style (listed below). Posts may be edited by moderators to ensure consistency.

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Post titles use headline-style capitalization

CMOS 8.160---Principles of headline-style capitalization.

The conventions of head­line style are governed mainly by emphasis and grammar. The following rules, though occasionally arbitrary, are intended primarily to facilitate the consistent styling of titles mentioned or cited in text and notes:

1. Capitalize the first and last words in titles and subtitles (but see rule 7), and capitalize all other major words (nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and some conjunctions---but see rule 4).
2. Lowercase the articles the, a, and an.
3. Lowercase prepositions, regardless of length, except when they are used adverbially or adjectivally (up in Look Up, down in Turn Down, on in The On Button, to in Come To, etc.) or when they compose part of a Latin expression used adjectivally or adverbially (De Facto, In Vitro, etc.).
4. Lowercase the common coordinating conjunctions and, but, for, or, and nor.
5. Lowercase to not only as a preposition (rule 3) but also as part of an infinitive (to Run, to Hide, etc.), and lowercase as in any grammatical function.
6. Lowercase the part of a proper name that would be lowercased in text, such as de or von.
7. 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.

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CMOS 8.160---Examples of headline-style capitalization.

The following examples il­lustrate the numbered rules in 8.159. All of them demonstrate the first rule; the numbers in parentheses refer to rules 2--7.

• Mnemonics That Work Are Better Than Rules That Do Not
• Singing While You Work
• A Little Learning Is a Dangerous Thing (2)
• Four Theories concerning the Gospel according to Matthew (2, 3)
• Taking Down Names, Spelling Them Out, and Typing Them Up (3, 4)
• Tired but Happy (4) 
• The Editor as Anonymous Assistant (5)
• From Homo erectus to Homo sapiens: A Brief History (3, 7)
• Defenders of da Vinci Fail the Test: The Name Is Leonardo (2, 3, 6)
• Sitting on the Floor in an Empty Room (2, 3), but Turn On, Tune In, and Enjoy (3, 4)
• Ten Hectares per Capita, but Landownership and Per Capita Income (3)
• Progress in In Vitro Fertilization (3)

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CMOS 8.162---Titles containing quotations.

When a direct quotation of a sentence or an independent clause is used as a title, headline-style capitalization may be imposed, even for longer quotations.

• "We All Live More like Brutes Than like Humans": Labor and Capital in the Gold Rush

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