Housekeeping Glad We Got That Cleared Up
posted by on August 8 at 9:48 AM
E. E. Cummings should be spelled with capitals but bell hooks should not.
From the University of Chicago Manual of Style, entry 8.6:
The names of certain writers occasionally appear without capitals—for example, bell hooks. If such unconventional spelling is the strong preference of the bearer of the name, it should be respected in appropriate contexts. E. E. Cummings can be capitalized, however, since one of his publishers, not he himself, lowercased his name. (Library catalogs usually capitalize all such names.) For obvious reasons, a lowercased name should begin a sentence.
(Also: We know how much Christopher looooves the library’s quick information line, but it must be said—when I called to ask this question, they cited Wikipedia as their authoritative source. They gave me the right answer—Cummings up, hooks down—but Wikipedia? Seriously?)
UPDATE: Correction! For obvious reasons, a lowercased name should not begin a sentence. Not.
the world is going downhill. have josh post another cheetos Wikimedia; the wikis do have some useless redeeming qualities
Please tell me that this was your error and it was not printed thus in the CMS:
"For obvious reasons, a lowercased name should be begin a sentence."
Levi,
FWIW, I happened to have my CMoS (15th Ed., 12th printing) down from the shelf already, so I checked. "For obvious reasons, a lowercased name should not begin a sentence."
Phew! Thanks evanland.
That's frightfully vague for CMS, though; are they suggesting that no one should ever use bell hooks's name to start a sentence, or that if one does, one should capitalize the initial 'b'?
>UPDATE: Correction! For obvious reasons, a lowercased name should not be begin a sentence. Not.
it's not the "not" that's the problem, it's the "be begin" that makes us think you're hitting happy hour somewhat early.
Levi,
CMoS gives no further explanation. The way I read it, the problem is to be written around. “Author bell hooks...” or the like.
E. E. Cummings should be spelled with capitals
I think you're overreaching here. The paragraph says that it can be spelled with capitals, but doesn't say that spelling it with lowercase is incorrect.
The man's name was E. E. Cummings. That's what it said on his tax return. There is no reason to ever refer to Bell Hooks in print, so it doesn't matter.
But you folk at the Stranger don't use the Chicago manual, do you? You probably follow that horrible abomination that is the AP style guide - the tome that would have us lowercase the "t" in "The", in examples when it's clearly part of a proper noun (i.e. band names).
Sigh.
@8:
Bingo!
Zing!
Zingo!!!
We do use Chicago (with bits of AP thrown in, mostly for dealing with numbers).
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