Chicago Manual of Style or Associated Press?

So whom are we following, really?

I’ve always thought it’s Chicago Manual of Style. Damn, I’ve been treating this as my holy book! But now I realised that e.g. the “three letters or less” preposition lowercase rule is nowhere to be found in CMoS:

8.157 Principles ofheadline-style capitalization.

  1. 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.).
  2. Lowercase the conjunctions and, but, for, or, and nor.

However it’s actually present in AP guidelines. Compare: Words to Capitalize in a Title | Title Case Converter

So, when in doubt, is it better to consult CMoS or AP? Or just ask around here? :wink:

We don’t really follow either. There are style guidelines for various languages and entity types and we follow artist intent. Everything not covered by those two is up to individual editors (so you can follow the Chicago manual if you want to). :slight_smile:

I’ve been around MB for over a decade now, so I know our style guidelines pretty much by heart! :smiley:

But for some reason I had this feeling that they were based on CMoS.

if it is a religious album then it also has a different style as well. if you had something like (Arise O Lord)
the (O) and (L) are always a caps no matter where they come and (God) is a caps if it is a religious album if it is not then it is lower case

If ‘O’ comes from ‘Oh’ in that case, then it’s always going to be capitalised as an interjection, I think. Like here or here.

I actually started this thread after getting the new Tim Hecker LP, Anoyo. I have an urge to capitalise ‘but’ in “Is But a Simulated Blur” since it works here as an adverb rather than a conjunction.

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i don’t know if this will help you. but it is worth looking at to see how it lines up with your link
http://www.editoraustralia.com/styleguide_capitals.html

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I noticed this recently when wondering whether to capitalize four-letter prepositions like “from” or “with”. My gut feel was to put them in lowercase but MB style (and ‘guess case’) says to capitalize, which follows AP style.

It seems that we capitalize “from” and “with” when part of the main title, but lower case in ETI. But it is strange when every now and then you see them with lower case on releases themselves and we capitalize them.

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The way I remember it, the English preposition rules were (at least partly) designed to be easy for non-native English speakers to follow. That’s why it’s short, simple, and has a whitelist of words.

Yes, because ETI is “sentence case”, not “title case”.

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