As we've been having this convo, I've also been working on the flier for our holiday party. I recycled last year's, as one does, and despite re-reading it a half-dozen times, I managed to leave the 2013 on it when I emailed it to the whole company (and printed multiple copies). As you'd imagine, the person who proofreads everybody else's stuff is taking some hits on this.

Who besides me likes Fred's style the best because it capitalizes all of the title instead of just the first word - just like we were taught as kids? (I'm guessing it'll have some overlap with the people who stand with me in the pro-em-dash/space and pro-oxford comma corner).

Who besides me likes Fred's style the best because it capitalizes all of the title instead of just the first word - just like we were taught as kids?

AMA style is to only capitalize the first word (and proper nouns) in articles, but to capitalize all the words for book titles. It gets weirder with internet references, because you have to decide if a reference is equivalent to an article or a book, and capitalize accordingly.

APA is the same. And it BUGS.

Stephanie Lastname, I Thought This Shirt Was Clean: A Study of the Effects of Laundering on Fur Deposits in Common Fabrics, 53 Annals of Household Animal Fur Research 234-57 (2014).

Heh. Whereas in my head, I was all For more information, see (conref link: external)I Thought This Shirt Was Clean: A Study of the Effects of Laundering on Fur Deposits in Common Fabrics (/conref link: external) by Stephanie Lastname.

Then our content tools would throw a hissy-fit over an external link, and I'd have to go in to the schema and make the appropriate magic gestures to it renders. Then explain to one of the PMs that the information already exists, created by someone more knowledgable on the subject than us, so there's no point to my rewriting it, and hey do they have the new UI screens for me yet? No? Then stop bothering me.

despite re-reading it a half-dozen times, I managed to leave the 2013 on it

My boss just sent me a flyer. She said cheerfully "there's no deadline!" There's a deadline printed in red at the top of the first page - it's the same date we're going to press.

It's amazing what you can miss when you're proofreading. This is why I proofread twice when I can, and always appreciate a second set of eyeballs.

Oh, we link shit, too (right in the Word doc I'm editing, which drives me bonkers, because if I accidentally click on a reference title, my browser helpfully pops up with that website), but I don't have anything to do with the formatting of it. It all gets styled before I ever see it.

If you would just get a job with this journal, you wouldn't have to worry so much about tiny aspects of style:

[link]

Who besides me likes Fred's style the best because it capitalizes all of the title instead of just the first word - just like we were taught as kids?

We only capitalize the first word in article titles, but all the words in book, journal, and magazine titles. IEEE style is the same as Chicago, except where it isn't.

And of course everyone has very good reasons for doing it the way they do, even though it drives other people nuts.