Q. Should the names of birds be capitalized? For example, is it “little blue heron” or “Little Blue Heron” (a problem since “little” and “blue” can sound like descriptors and not part of a creature’s formal name)? Or “heron” generally and “Little Blue Heron” specifically?
A. In Chicago style, common names for birds are usually lowercased, whether you’re referring to a little blue heron or a blue-footed booby, and except for any proper noun or adjective (American crow). If you’re worried that it won’t be clear that you’re referring to a specific type of heron rather than to a heron of a particular size and color, revise your text accordingly (e.g., a bird known as the little blue heron).
It should be noted that organizations dedicated to animals tend to use initial capitals for common names (as on this page from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology), an approach that solves the problem of ambiguity. But in most types of prose, lowercase is the rule for such names. See also CMOS 8.129 and 8.130; for names like Egretta caerulea (the scientific name for the little blue heron), see 8.121.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. When should the name of a martial art be capitalized? I see very different practices, especially for the following martial arts: Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Kodokan judo, muay Thai, and Shotokan karate. Even more confusing, some martial arts (e.g., Gracie jiu-jitsu) are both brand names and martial arts. Help!!
A. The names of martial arts that have become well known in English can usually be lowercased except for any proper noun or adjective in the name. That’s what you’ve done in your list, except that we’d write Muay Thai (with a capital M). Either because the adjective Thai follows the name for the technique (muay, roughly analogous to boxing)—or, more likely, because muay isn’t a common word in English—nobody seems to write muay Thai (with a lowercase m).
As for brand names, you could model your usage on Scotch tape and keep the generic part lowercase, as in Gracie jiu-jitsu (see CMOS 8.154). But be prepared to make exceptions for official names of organizations and the like, as in the International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation. Note that we’ve retained jiu-jitsu over the common spelling jujitsu partly based on the spelling in the name of that organization.
In sum: Use lowercase for generic words that are common in English and be prepared to make exceptions.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. When writing about experiments it’s common to name things like samples as “sample A.” Should “sample” be capitalized, as “Sample A” is referring to a specific sample, or is “sample” acting as a descriptive title and “A” is the proper noun?
A. In Chicago style, most generic nouns remain lowercase when paired with a letter or number: page 14, section 1.3, chapter 5, table 2, figure A.1, appendix B, apartment 2D, suite B, stage II, type 1, grade 3 (see CMOS 9.8 for additional examples). Exceptions are reserved for course titles and other official names and designations—as in Economics 101 (the title of an introductory course on economics; see 8.87), Category 5 (the highest level on the Saffir–Simpson wind scale), or Title IX (the civil rights law). Our preference, then, would be to write “sample A” (with a small s).
Some guides, especially in the sciences, specify initial caps for certain parts of a document (as in Table 2 and Figure A.1); see The CSE Manual: Scientific Style and Format for Authors, Editors, and Publishers, 9th ed., sec. 9.3.3, and the AMA Manual of Style, 11th ed., sec. 10.4. But a sample isn’t in this category, so we’d recommend lowercase even in scientific usage (as in this 2024 article on polygenic embryo screening in vol. 7, issue 5, of JAMA Network Open, which has “sample 1” but “Figure 1A”).
For the en dash in “Saffir–Simpson,” see CMOS 6.85.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Is it Chicago style to not capitalize clauses in the US Constitution (the commerce clause, the due process clause, etc.)? If so, what is the reasoning?
A. Such terms are not normally capitalized in Chicago style; see CMOS 8.81, which includes the example “the due process clause.” The reason for lowercase is that the Constitution doesn’t have a Commerce Clause or a Due Process Clause—not with those titles anyway.
Instead, “commerce clause” and “due process clause” refer to certain passages in the Constitution that treat commerce and due process. We realize, however, that those terms (and others naming specific clauses) have acquired the status of proper nouns for many writers and are often styled with initial caps in published prose. And Merriam-Webster, though it uses lowercase in its headwords for such terms (see, e.g., the entry for “due process clause”), adds the label “often capitalized.”
If Chicago’s default style is too conservative for you, capitalization-wise, there’s nothing wrong with applying initial caps to such terms as long as you stick to clauses (e.g., the Due Process Clause, but the legal concept of due process).
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Hello! In the examples in CMOS 8.48, can you clarify why Southern California, Northern California, West Tennessee, East Tennessee, and Middle Tennessee get capitalized, whereas western Arizona, eastern Massachusetts, southern Minnesota, northwest Illinois, and central Illinois do not?
A. Southern California and Northern California are capitalized because they have become recognized beyond their borders as the names of two geographic and cultural entities. East, West, and Middle Tennessee are capitalized as the names of the three “grand divisions” in that state, a usage that has become widely accepted; see, among other sources, the entry for “Tennessee” in Britannica. (Many sources style these as the Grand Divisions—with initial capitals—including this page from the Tennessee Historical Society. Tennessee’s state constitution, on the other hand, uses lowercase, and it doesn’t name the three divisions.)
As for the other examples in your question, each of those is more likely to be used generically (i.e., to refer to the western or other portion of a state) rather than as a proper noun. And though any of them might be capitalized in local usage (as in a travel guide extolling the virtues of a certain region), such usage shouldn’t necessarily determine your own (or that of your author). When in doubt, use lowercase for terms like western at the state level and caps for national or global regions.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. The 18th edition says to include “The” when part of an official periodical title. What about upper- or lowercasing “The” in organizations such as The Juilliard School or The Metropolitan Museum of Art? (I prefer lowercase, but they refer to themselves with “The.”)
A. Chicago’s new guidelines relative to an initial article in names like The New York Times do not extend to the names of organizations. The main reason behind this difference is that the names of organizations aren’t set off from the surrounding text by italics or quotation marks.
The occasional exception can be made on a case-by-case basis—like the exceptions made by Julliard and the Met when writing about themselves (or by the University of Chicago Press in its copyright lines, including at the foot of this page: “© 2024 by The University of Chicago”). But when you refer to organizations other than your own, there’s generally no obligation to capitalize an initial “the.”
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Regarding professional titles (e.g., “chef”) that appear before a person’s name in running copy, it’s not clear when such titles should be initial capped. In CMOS 8.20, Chicago indicates that “professional titles are capitalized when they immediately precede a personal name and are thus used as part of the name (traditionally replacing the title holder’s first name).” But in 8.31, Chicago writes, “When preceding a name, generic titles that describe a person’s role or occupation—such as philosopher or historian—are normally lowercased.” So my question is, Do you have any guidance for distinguishing between a “professional title” and “generic titles that describe a person’s role or occupation”? It would seem that this is a contradiction in Chicago, but perhaps I’m missing something? Any input on this issue would be greatly appreciated!
A. The difference between a professional title and a job description won’t always be crystal clear. If you’re unsure about a particular term not covered in CMOS, try looking up usage for someone famous and using that as your model.
For example, would you refer to “Chef Julia Child,” with a capital C in Chef, and by extension to “Chef Child”? This n-gram from Google Books suggests that this choice would be an outlier. And it’s not how Child and other professional chefs are referred to in the book Appetite for Life, the authorized biography of Child by Noël Riley Fitch (Anchor Books, 1999). Instead, modeling the usage in that book—which refers, for example, to “the teaching of chef Pierre Mangelotte” (181)—you’d refer to chef Julia Child or to Julia Child, the chef (but never to “Chef Child”).
Still, if you wanted to call a particular character “Chef Smith” in a novel or story, that could work well, assuming that’s how the character would be addressed by others (in the manner of a doctor or a coach; see CMOS 8.37). And there may be some real-life chefs who insist on the same—as well as some books that apply the initial capital. But lowercase for chef seems like the more appropriate choice in most cases.
Words for other types of jobs can be investigated in the same way. If your efforts fail to yield a clear choice, go with lowercase.
[Editor’s update: As one of our readers has pointed out to us, Julia Child may often be referred to as a chef, but she was not a chef in the strictest sense of that term, in which a chef is someone who has run a kitchen in a restaurant or similar organization. Such a professional would include, for example, the chef José Andrés, who is often referred to as Chef José Andrés or Chef Andrés, where “Chef” is considered to be his title. Our advice above should have included this distinction.]
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Should the names of childhood games be capitalized in prose? For example, kick the can, ghost in the graveyard, and so on. These games are not listed in Merriam-Webster, so my initial thought is to leave them lowercase, but I’d love to hear what you think!
A. Capitalization is usually reserved for brand names, so your initial thought to use lowercase for the names of generic children’s games like kick the can and ghost in the graveyard (or tag or follow the leader or tic-tac-toe, etc.) aligns with what we’d recommend (see CMOS 8.192).
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Hello! In fiction, when describing what a sign says, should that text be in italics? Example: “The sign on the wall said NO DOGS ALLOWED.” If the answer is yes, where can I find this in CMOS? Thank you!
A. In Chicago style, italics wouldn’t normally be used for referring to the words on a sign, which can usually be presented in headline style (i.e., title case): No Dogs Allowed. If the words on the sign are in all caps, however, all caps may be retained (or, subject to a designer’s discretion, small caps): NO DOGS ALLOWED. A longer notice may be placed in quotation marks and treated as an ordinary quotation. See also CMOS 7.61.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Are menu items such as “Bananas Foster” capitalized?
A. Menu items can usually be rendered in lowercase except for any proper nouns and adjectives. For example, you might order a double cheeseburger and curly french fries followed by bananas Foster for dessert, each reflecting a named item on a menu. Only Foster, the dessert’s eponym (i.e., the person for whom it’s named, as explained in another Q&A), is capitalized.*
Similarly, you could order a Big Mac and french fries followed by a McFlurry with Oreo cookies and an iced coffee. McDonald’s applies initial capitals to all those menu items—and styles OREO in all caps—but you can follow the rules for brand names outlined at CMOS 8.69.
An exception can be made for creative or unusual names that may or may not be branded—like “Cheatin’ Vegan Nachos.” In that case, use quotation marks and, unless the item appears in lowercase on the menu, initial caps.
* Following CMOS 8.61, our preference would normally be for “french fries” (as listed there) and “bananas foster” (not listed there), but in anticipation of the forthcoming 18th edition, we’ve gone ahead and followed the entries in Merriam-Webster for both terms here (french fries but bananas Foster).
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]