Question

I am a bit confused on what to do when punctuation is in the title, as shown in the reference below.

Details

I know you are supposed to capitalize the first letter of the first word after a colon, but I am not sure if the dashes fall in to this category. I would appreciate any clarification! Bloor, A. (2009). The rhythm's gonna get ya'--Background music in primary classrooms and its effect on behaviour and attainment. Emotional & Behavioural Difficulties,14(4), 261-274. doi:10.1080/13632750903303070

Answered By: Linda Kern
Last Updated: Dec 12, 2016     Views: 106

Sometimes it make you just want to find another article! :-)

The punctuation isn't the real issue, it's just a convenient guideline. The real question is whether the second part is part of the title, or is a separate subtitle. Technically, a subtitle is a "secondary portion of the title proper of a work, usually consisting of an explanatory or limiting phrase, following a colon or semicolon and often beginning with ''" or 'an'." http://www.abc-clio.com/ODLIS/searchODLIS.aspx .

That isn't what you have here. The second part of the title is more of a title than the first part.  The first part is technically a catchword title. For your purposes, it means that you treat the whole thing as the title, and capitalize only the first word, "The". There is no need to capitalize "background".

FAQ Actions

Related Questions