In fact they won’t.
So you have our permission to write The The and The Who—and The Band, for that matter. Our rules are not laws. They are meant to be adjusted for the unusual case or to suit a particular context. And that’s The Truth.
So, the Chicago Manual of Style (one of the most well-regarded and useful such publications, not only in Chicago) has given you permission to break the rule, basically because they have given up and you’re going to do it anyway and look like an illiterate. They’re not wrong of course, but I’m sorry they threw in the towel because we count on them to mediate these disputes and doing things the right way used to matter.
If you want, you can find a huge and sometimes very heated back-and-forth in the Wikipedia editors’ backstage discussion pages about whether the Beatles should get the big T treatment, and those in favor didn’t seem to understand that it’s not about respect for the group’s chosen nomenclature, which does include the word “the”, it’s a longstanding custom not to capitalize that word in a name mid-sentence. Eventually the “small t” faction was declared the winner but of course it’s Wikipedia and so the thing is not enforced, and certainly not for other band names. Just remember, if you’re writing for a real publication you’d best not do the big T thing because an editor will change it anyway and snicker at you behind your back.
OK, I get it. And I’m fine with either approach. But THE BEATLES had “THE BEATLES” on Ringo’s drum set, so I can’t help but think that, at least in this one case, it’s more appropriate to use The Beatles. They were not just Beatles, or some Beatles, or a few Beatles.
Or even one Beatle? Would he be The Beatle?
In my book, yes.
I have a coworker, born in Korea, native Korean speaker, moved over to the US in his teens, and speaks near-perfect English. But what he has trouble with was The Definite Article. I used to always advise him on the correct usage, but I realized I could never say why usage here was right, but hot right there. My usual answer was “it sounds right”. If there ever was a rule, saying why (in the US) that “I’m in school today” is correct and “I’m in the hospital today” is also correct, but “I’m in hospital today” is not, I never learned it. They just “sound right/wrong”.
As THE WHO said, “I can’t explain”.
It’s a longstanding custom to refer to an entity by the name the entity wishes to be referred to. You’ll find that in the Associated Press stylebook, which generally discourages the use of unnecessary capitals.
Unless, of course, the editor you’re writing for uses either the AP Stylebook or the Chicago Manual of Style.
I can’t find any specific guidance in my 56th edition AP Stylebook for bands, but for companies it does say to include “The” if it is part of the formal company name, and it says to follow the spelling preferred by the company, and to capitalize the first letter of company names in all uses.
Looking online at AP’s own website, I see about half the time they capitalize “the” in “The Rolling Stones” or “The Beatles” mid-sentence, and half the time they don’t. “The Who” seems to always get capitalized mid-sentence.
Sometimes capitalizing the T looks right, and sometimes it doesn’t. I have no problem at all with “Buddy Holly and the Crickets.” Writing about the Guess Who doesn’t bother me. And it is definitely proper to talk about the Carpenters. (They made that decision themselves.)
Out of curiosity, I just looked at images of some of the early contracts for performances by The Beatles. They are pretty uniform in referring to the group as “The Beatles” or “THE BEATLES.”
No. Re-read what they wrote. The rules aren’t laws, and need to be tailored to specific situations where confusion could occur. For bands like The Who this is a reasonable adjustment (not a violation) of a rule because to do otherwise would lead to confusion and unclear communications. You know, the reason why we have style guides. In this case, the rule didn’t cover all scenarios and needed to be modified.
If a style guide rule leads to confusion, it’s a bad rule. The guides would be the first to admit that. That’s why no rules are absolute, and they get modified all the time. It’s like a body double for another rule. 
This is what happens when you don’t treat “The” as part of the name.
So, per the poster, it should be The who.
Kent, I know you’re just teasing, but nobody has suggested that “the” is not part of the Who’s name. I suspect that some people are parsing it like this: “the” is part of a name, names are capitalized, so “the” must be capitalized.
So why do I (and AP and Chicago style guides) say the preferred custom in writing is to go with small-t “the”? Quoting the relevant bit in Chicago, “…we treat the definite article as a generic bit of syntax that’s required for some band names and organizations but not for others (Santana, for example). If we extend this logic to the The and the Who, we do so in the spirit of fairness…” Not satisfied? I was at the dentist today and had a lot of down time to dwell on the matter. My theory here is that the small-t version became standard because we often elide the word “the” in speech, so in saying a name like “the Yankees” or “the Box Tops” or “the New Yorker”, that first word is sort of treated like an extra syllable tacked on, so you get “th’Yankees”, “th’Box Tops”, etc. (I might as well add that the New Yorker and the New York Times, and perhaps other newspapers, have within the last few decades begun using the Big-T method when referring to themselves; which bugs me and you won’t catch me doing it, I suppose they think they have good reason but it comes off as self-important and off-putting.) Titles of works, on the other hand, get the Big-T treatment: “I have never read The Hobbit and don’t intend to.” That (according to my made-up formula) is to encourage you to not elide the word, but treat it as part of a separate concept within the sentence, again as spoken, so you give it a bit of breathing space and the listener will understand. (D’ya think I should send this hunch of mine in? I always fancied myself a big idea kind of guy and this one might have lots of potential in the armchair linguist community.)
Couple of loose thoughts: suggesting that The Who appearing that way, big-T big-W, on a poster proves anything is bogus. Words on posters are often not sentences, and that’s what we’re dealing with here. Also, for some reason I don’t disapprove of writing the indefinite article (a, an) in a name mid-sentence as a capital. Maybe because I’m a bloody hypocrite, but mostly because it’s so rare. I’m thinking of that 80s group A Flock of Pigeons, or whatever they were—really, I feel sorry for them having such a stupid name. In fact I feel sorry for the whole decade that has to claim that name as something that happened then. And, once again, it bears emphasisis, not capitalizing “the” is not to belittle or deny the Supreme Importance of any collection of musos who gather together under a collective name beginning with an article, why we hold them all in nothing but the highest regard!
Well I hope my little spew here has inspired a re-think among a few open-minded souls, a trend we like to encourage. It is true that written English is beset with contradictions, in spelling, in grammar, in usage, and I feel for that Korean fellow mentioned above whose English is just a whisker’s whisker close to being perfect save for this whole business of When do you use “the”? umm, well when it sounds right… Imagine the torment of trying to internalize such nonsense, and don’t dare point out that some say “in the hospital” others say “in hospital”, all that stuff, there’s no “why” to any of it, it just is.
If you went to the record store (assuming you could find such a thing in these days) and you wanted to buy a copy of an album by the Who, would you look under “W” or “T”?
If the answer is W, then “the” should not be capitalized.
That’s my answer and I’m sticking to it.
@Smapti, I just wanted to let you know that I’m strongly on the opposite side of this debate but find your stated reasoning infuriatingly compelling. I still don’t agree, but goddammit…
Does it work the same for “a”? Would the band “A Day to Remember” be filed under A or D? Also, is the “A” capitalized mid-sentence for them?
This is just about bands, right? If I’m reading this right, (book/movie/album) titles and songs get the capital The mid-sentence. Just not band names.
My weaksauce rebuttal in that case would be eponymous albums. “My favorite album by the Doors is The Doors.” Seems weirdly inconsistent to me.
(It is not lost on me that I had to craft that sentence. My normal way of speaking would be “My favorite Doors album is The Doors.”)
According to this article, the Associated Press makes an exception to “The Who” in capitalizing the “the.” There are links to two AP website references, but they are subscription-only, so I cannot access them.
Which explains why when I was perusing articles on the Associated Press website, everything I saw with “The Who” had it capitalized. It doesn’t explain why other examples were completely inconsistent, though.
ETA: I was able to access the sources:
Unfortunately, in many on-line listing orders, you find it under “T”. As a old fart, I’ve long ranted about database listings not ignoring indefinite articles at the beginning.
If you went to a bookstore (assuming you could find such a thing these days) and you wanted a copy of “The World According to Garp”, would you look (under the author) in the Ts or the Ws? But the book is not “the World According to Garp”.
I believe book titles should be italicized, not put in quotes.
(d & r)
You Better Run!
(what about song titles?)
Quotes.