How to capitalize a title

I like doing these things by hand, but here’s a useful service for the careful writer: TitleCapitalization. Type in your title, and it’s capitalized for you.

This service might not satisfy the super-careful writer. Here are TitleCapitalization’s rules, presented as a paraphrase of The Chicago Manual of Style (8.157):

1. Capitalize the first and the last word.
2. Capitalize nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and subordinate conjunctions.
3. Lowercase articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions, and prepositions.
4. Lowercase the “to” in an infinitive (I want to play guitar).

The Chicago rules are a bit more complicated:

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 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.

Did I say a bit ? And then there are the rules for hyphenated compounds.

TitleCapitalization won’t solve every title problem (Turn Down , Acipenser fulvescens , E-flat ), but it would go a long way toward getting a title right. It’s saddens me to realize that even the basics of capitalizing a title call for an understanding of grammar (the parts of speech and the functions of words) that most twenty-first-century college students lack.

I found TitleCapitalization by reading Daughter Number Three.

[I know my parts of speech, but I like the modesty of sentence-style titles for Orange Crate Art posts.]

*

May 9: John Wohn’s Twitter reaction to this post — “Alas, grammar! Grammar blog about capitalizing titles DOESN’T capitalize its titles!! WTF!!” — might have been forestalled had Wohn read the sentence in brackets just above. It’s always been there. WTF indeed.

Finals time again

As finals near: How to do well on a final examination. I wrote this post in 2005 because I was unable to find anything like it online. It offers practical advice for keeping calm and carrying on, all of which remains sound. There’s also some anti-advice, from 2007: How to do horribly on a final exam. My students tell me that Grey’s Anatomy is still on television, which means that all (three) pop-culture references in the “horribly” post remain timely.

A Fragile Trust, tonight on PBS

Tonight on the PBS series Independent Lens: A Fragile Trust, a documentary about the New York Times reporter and fabulist Jayson Blair.

Naked City Mongol

[From the Naked City episode “Dust Devil on a Quiet Street,” November 28, 1962. Click for a larger view.]

Get a good look at this counterman (Martin Sheen). His shirt: crisp and clean. His hair: neatly combed. And his pencil: a Mongol no. 2.

The Mongol is, at least in my overactive imagination, the official pencil of the Naked City. The brand makes three pretty conspicuous appearances in the series. This has been one of them.

Related reading
A Naked City Mongol
One more Mongol
All OCA Mongol posts (Pinboard)
All OCA Naked City posts (Pinboard)

Haydn’s pencil

Elaine found a photograph of Franz Joseph Haydn’s pencil. Or one of his pencils. He probably used more than one.

Related reading
All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)

NPR, sheesh

From the sublime to the not-sublime: NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday had a segment this morning announcing the winner of a contest run by Bleeding Fingers Custom Music Shop, a company that supplies music to reality-television shows, “everything from Duck Dynasty to Survivor.” The prize: a job as a staff composer at Bleeding Fingers. No irony here, just Rachel Martin’s cheerfulness. Speaking to the winner: “I imagine you have to be kind of thrilled, right?”

NPR, what’s going on?

Other cranky NPR posts
NPR speaking
A yucky Wednesday on NPR

Sonny Rollins on music

Sonny Rollins, on NPR’s All Things Considered this afternoon, responding to the question of whether there is anything more he would like to do in music: “Music is an open sky.”

Related reading
All OCA Sonny Rollins posts (Pinboard)

Mark Trail revised

One more time.


[Mark Trail, May 3, 2014.]


[Mark Trail revised, May 3, 2014.]

Much better this way. The context is here. Look out where yr going, Mrs. Trail.

*

9:08 p.m.: There’s no end to it.


[Mark Trail revised again, May 3, 2014.]

Chet Baker was an influence here.

Related reading
All OCA Mark Trail posts (Pinboard)

Anthony Catalano, friend of Boro Park

[Anthony Catalano, “NYC Blizzard of February 6-7, 1978 Brooklyn, Boro Park, New Utrecht Ave Tel: ULster 1-5012.” Available at Flickr. Licensed under a Creative Commons 2.0 License. Click for a larger view. And here’s the original size.]

Looking online for Brooklyn past, I saw the sad news that Anthony Catalano has died. I never knew him, but I have taken great pleasure in his photographs. His Flickr account (which his brother says will remain active) has 2,897 photographs, many of life in Brooklyn, and many of life in Brooklyn’s Boro Park. Mr. Catalano also contributed to the Facebook group Old Boro Park. For Boro Park ex-pats of a certain age, Anthony Catalano’s photographs are powerful madeleines, even more powerful than a Coke and a slice.

I chose this photograph for New Utrecht (my family lived close to the Avenue, and I’ve always liked its name) and the signage. The ULster exchange is a bonus. The Coca-Cola sign, by the way, is what’s called a privilege sign. Notice too the Breyers sign in the window.

A related post
P. S. 131, 44th Street, Brooklyn

[People from Boro Park tend to spell its name without ‑ugh.]

Mark Trail revised

[Mark Trail, May 2, 2014.]

Like films and television shows, Mark Trail at times has continuity problems. In yesterday’s strip, it was getting late, and dark. Darkness filled the darkening air. Today, too, it’s getting late, as Cherry Trail observes, but things are brighter, lighter. Whither the dark?


[There it is! Mark Trail revised, May 2, 2014.]

Joining yesterday’s revision to today’s would make a nice strip:


[Mark Trail revised, May 1–2, 2014.]

But the more I studied Cherry’s face, the more I could see only one thing to do:


[Cherry Cherry Cherry Cherry, May 2, 2014.]

Note: No one — no one — messes with Cherry’s hair.

Related reading
All OCA Mark Trail posts (Pinboard)

[All revisions made with the free Mac app Seashore and Preview’s Instant Alpha tool. I am beginning to understand Alpha.]