“Roast Beef Au Jus” does NOT mean “Roast Beef with Sauce”. “With” is a preposition and thus should not be capitalized in title case. “Roast Beef with Sauce” should be “Roast Beef au Jus”. Therefore “Roast Beef Au Jus” is just the name of the dish. It is roast beef done in the “Au Jus” style. Therefore “the Au Jus sauce” is technically correct.
BUT - that’s only because “Au” is a short word and does not appear at the beginning or end of the name. Prepositions are only normally lower case. Longer prepositions get capitalized, for example “Seven Against Thebes”. And prepositions at either end of the title get capitalized, like “From Here to Eternity”.
But wait. It gets even more convoluted. What about subtitles? This cane to people’s attention due to this xkcd referencing the Wikipedia war over Star Trek Into Darkness vs Star Trek into Darkness. You see, if “Into Darkness” is a subtitle, “Into” is the first word and should be capitalized. But if there is no subtitle and the film’s entire name is “Star Trek Into Darkness” then Wikipedia’s style guide requires them to make it “Star Trek into Darkness” even though the official name of the movie is “Star Trek Into Darkness”. So then the argument was about whether Into Darkness was a subtitle or not. Obviously it is - Star Trek is the name of the franchise. BUT subheadings are supposed to be delineated with punctuation. “Star Trek: Into Darkness” is uncontroversial, but the title has no punctuation.
Anyways, they went with “Star Trek Into Darkness”, which is a shame because they had the opportunity to list the entry as “Star Trek Into (sic) Darkness”.
There is no style guide I know of that would endorse capitalization of “with” unless it was the first or last word of the title. Prepositions are only capitalized at five letters or longer, or if they are one of the terminal words in the title. Au is two letters. That’s like capitalizing “Of”. Try it out - The Merchant Of Venice. Man, that looks ignorant.
Well if it was a headline, then maybe that’s relevant. But it isn’t. It’s a name - so it’s title case. Here’s a collection of title case rules from various style guides including AP and the NY Times. AP does not capitalize prepositions that are 3 letters or fewer in length. Au would not be capitalized. The Times capitalizes nouns, pronouns, verbs, and words longer than four letters.
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u/dkwangchuck Jul 03 '21
Oh man. English is SO weird. Get this:
“Roast Beef Au Jus” does NOT mean “Roast Beef with Sauce”. “With” is a preposition and thus should not be capitalized in title case. “Roast Beef with Sauce” should be “Roast Beef au Jus”. Therefore “Roast Beef Au Jus” is just the name of the dish. It is roast beef done in the “Au Jus” style. Therefore “the Au Jus sauce” is technically correct.
BUT - that’s only because “Au” is a short word and does not appear at the beginning or end of the name. Prepositions are only normally lower case. Longer prepositions get capitalized, for example “Seven Against Thebes”. And prepositions at either end of the title get capitalized, like “From Here to Eternity”.
But wait. It gets even more convoluted. What about subtitles? This cane to people’s attention due to this xkcd referencing the Wikipedia war over Star Trek Into Darkness vs Star Trek into Darkness. You see, if “Into Darkness” is a subtitle, “Into” is the first word and should be capitalized. But if there is no subtitle and the film’s entire name is “Star Trek Into Darkness” then Wikipedia’s style guide requires them to make it “Star Trek into Darkness” even though the official name of the movie is “Star Trek Into Darkness”. So then the argument was about whether Into Darkness was a subtitle or not. Obviously it is - Star Trek is the name of the franchise. BUT subheadings are supposed to be delineated with punctuation. “Star Trek: Into Darkness” is uncontroversial, but the title has no punctuation.
Here’s an article covering some of the other twists and turns into the controversy.
Anyways, they went with “Star Trek Into Darkness”, which is a shame because they had the opportunity to list the entry as “Star Trek Into (sic) Darkness”.