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.

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.

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.

Q. Do we repeat the abbreviation in ordinal ranges? E.g., should I write “24th–25th” or “24–25th”? In the case of numbers with different ordinal abbreviations it seems the former is obviously preferable (“1–2nd” is obviously infelicitous), but if the two numbers take the same ordinal abbreviation, then it seems (arguably, marginally) better to not repeat unnecessarily.

A. Write ordinal ranges as they would be pronounced; in other words, repeat the ordinal ending in all cases (1st–2nd, 24th–25th, 101st–200th). Another way to look at this is that the ordinal ending is an integral part of an ordinal number and shouldn’t be omitted except in special cases.

One special case is for dates. Days of the month are typically written as cardinals in Chicago (and US) style, though they’re usually pronounced as ordinals: May 9 (pronounced May 9th). A range of days would also be written without ordinal endings: May 5–9. But when a day is used alone or ahead of the month, it’s normally expressed as an ordinal: the 9th of May or, in a range, the 5th–9th of May (where both ordinal endings are required). See also CMOS 9.33.

Note that when you spell out an ordinal, you should write through or to instead of using an en dash: first through tenth (not first–tenth). See also CMOS 6.83 (for en dashes) and 9.6 (for ordinals).

Q. I am writing a novella. One of my characters is a scientist. I do not know whether to write her name as Doctor Quimby or Dr. Quimby in narration or dialogue.

A. We get some version of this question a lot. The thread they all seem to share is a worry that an abbreviation (or more often a number) won’t look natural in dialogue. But though it’s true that people don’t normally speak an abbreviation as it’s spelled, the word Doctor is almost always abbreviated as a title before a name (regardless of the type of doctor). Plus, any reader (including text-to-speech applications) should know that Dr. is pronounced Doctor.

So unless you prefer the spelled-out form—there’s nothing wrong with spelling out Doctor—you can safely use the familiar abbreviation in all contexts, including dialogue. In other words, you can model your usage on the novella originally titled Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (by Robert Louis Stevenson; the abbreviations Dr. and Mr. appeared in both the title and text of the 1886 London first edition—and featured periods in the text but not on the title page or cover) rather than on Doctor Zhivago (the novel by Boris Pasternak, where Doctor in the title translates the unabbreviated Russian Доктор).

For more information about spelling out abbreviations and numbers in dialogue, see CMOS 12.51.

Q. Does CMOS have any suggestions for how to format the title of a playlist? Should it be put in quotes? Thank you!

A. Though CMOS doesn’t currently cover this topic, the title of a playlist can usually be placed in quotation marks (and capitalized in title case): “Copyeditor’s Baroque 1”; “Favorite Rarities”; “Walking Mix Fast.”

Though playlists are like albums (whose titles are italicized in Chicago style, as in Kind of Blue), they aren’t formally published like albums are, something italics might suggest. CMOS makes a similar distinction for the titles of theses and dissertations relative to published books; see CMOS 14.113.

Q. Dear CMOS, Would you please add guidance about how to cite a nonrecoverable source—i.e., a work that cannot be accessed or retrieved by a reader. For example, I was editing a conference paper that had this in the references list: eTerrestrial: an online Portal for terrestrial services, https://www.itu.int/ITU-R/eTerrestrial/eMIFR. Clicking on the eMIFR link in the conference paper brings up a web page that requires users to sign in. Because the tools in the eTerrestrial portal are inaccessible to everybody but members of the International Telecommunication Union, how should this source be cited?

A. In Chicago and other styles, source citations don’t generally require info about how to access the cited sources. For example, when you cite an article in an academic journal, you don’t need to clarify that readers may need a subscription or library access to read the article (or that they may need to pay a fee to get it).

This approach is necessary because access to most sources is limited in some way (sources don’t magically appear for anyone) and because any restrictions are subject to change without notice.

That said, there’s no rule against including such info in special cases. Here’s how we might add such information to your example, which we’ve adapted here for use with Chicago’s author-date system:

ITU (International Telecommunication Union). n.d. eMIFR (Master International Frequency Register tool). eTerrestrial: An Online Portal for Terrestrial Services. Accessed September 9, 2025. https://​www​.itu​.int​/ITU-R​/eTerrestrial​/eMIFR (requires a TIES [Telecommunication Information Exchange Services] account).

For the use of n.d. (no date) in author-date citations, see CMOS 14.104. For the use of abbreviations in author-date style for an organization as author, see 13.127.

Q. MS Word doesn’t like the “of” in this sentence: “All of these valves are on separate channels.” It puts a blue dotted line under “All of” and wants to get rid of the word “of” even though “of” starts a prepositional phrase. Is this some new trend? I know I could reword the sentence to read “These valves are all on separate channels,” but that seems to be a lot of work for what used to be (what I thought was) normal.

A. According to Bryan Garner, all the has been more common than all of the “since the beginnings of Modern English,” a pattern that holds when a word like its—or these in your example—is substituted for the. A Google Books Ngram comparing the frequency of the phrases all the things and all these things with and without of in published sources since 1800 backs this up. Substitute valves for things and the of-less versions are still in the lead. So it’s not a new trend. For whatever reason, the preposition of has long been considered optional or unnecessary in sentences like yours.

Still, as Garner notes, there are some exceptions, including when all is followed by a pronoun that isn’t either demonstrative or possessive, as in all of it (not all it). See Garner’s Modern English Usage (5th ed., Oxford, 2022), under “all. A. All (of).”

OK, but—exceptions aside—should you change all of to all “whenever possible,” as Garner suggests and Word supports? Yes, if you’re looking to cut unnecessary words, as editors usually are. But the phrase all of is just as correct as some of, many of, and most of—grammatically similar phrases that all require of where it might be optional after all.

So if you happen to think that all of works better than all in any given sentence, simply ignore the dotted blue underline, which is triggered by one of Word’s checks for “conciseness.” Most editors understand the value of being concise, but we also want things to sound natural.

Tip: In the desktop version of Word for Windows, the conciseness checks are listed in the Grammar Settings dialog box, which you’ll find by going to File > Options > Proofing, under Writing Style > Grammar & Refinements > Settings. If the box next to Wordiness (under the options for Conciseness) is checked, that’s what’s causing Word to flag all of. (Settings in Word for Mac will be similar.)

Q. I would like to know if boat names (smaller vessels, not big ships) should be italicized in fiction. I am editing a middle-grade novel that includes mention of a lot of boat names, and the italics feel wrong in the dialogue. Is there a case for italicizing the names in the narrative but not in dialogue?

A. If Victor Hugo can decide against applying italics to the name of a large vessel, you can do it for smaller ones. In Les Travailleurs de la mer, published in Paris in 1866 and in London that same year (as Toilers of the Sea, an English translation by W. Moy Thomas), the narrator explains that, “in spite of typographical usage,” references to the steamship Durande won’t be italicized (or souligner in French):

Having created his steamboat, Lethierry had christened it; he had called it Durande—‘La Durande.’ We will speak of her henceforth by no other name; we will claim the liberty also, in spite of typographical usage, of not italicizing this name Durande; conforming in this to the notion of Mess Lethierry, in whose eyes La Durande was almost a living person. (English ed., 1:132)

Après avoir créé ce bateau à vapeur, Lethierry l’avait baptisé. Il l’avait nommé Durande. La Durande, — nous ne l’appellerons plus autrement. On nous permettra également, quel que soit l’usage typographique, de ne point souligner ce nom Durande, nous conformant en cela à la pensée de mess Lethierry pour qui la Durande était une personne. (French ed., 1:136)

Note that the French edition uses italics to refer to the name Durande (“ce nom Durande”) but not to that name when it’s used for the ship (“la Durande”); the English translation doesn’t apply italics in either case. In the latest Chicago style, italics would be applied to “the word Durande”—and to “the Durande” as a ship—but not when referring to “the name Durande” (see CMOS 7.66 and 8.117).

So if it seems fussy or artificial or otherwise wrong to use italics for the names of the smaller boats mentioned in the dialogue of your book, you can take a page from Victor Hugo and go without them (assuming your author agrees). But if you do that, you might consider removing italics for boat names in the narrative also. Assuming you’d apply italics to the title of a book or the like whether it occurs in narration or dialogue, it’s probably best to be equally consistent for other categories. Even your middle-grade readers are likely to appreciate that.

For the capital T in Travailleurs (an alternative to strict sentence case for French titles), see CMOS 11.30.

Q. Greetings! If I’m interpreting CMOS 8.69 correctly, in a novel that takes place in NYC, should I suggest the author change “the Natural History Museum” (in narrative) to either “the natural history museum” or “the American Museum of Natural History” (the official name)? For some reason “the natural history museum” looks a little odd to me, but I also feel that it shouldn’t be capitalized because it’s not the official name. Many thanks for any advice!

A. You could just change the order to “the Museum of Natural History”; add “American” before “Museum” only if the context seems to call for using the full name. And though you could emulate Oxford University—which refers to itself either like that or as the University of Oxford—it’s probably best to stick more closely to what is in this case the museum’s official name. Any of the following would then be correct:

the American Museum of Natural History; the Museum of Natural History; the Natural History museum (lowercase m); the museum; a natural history museum in New York City

That way, sticklers can’t object that the name of the museum is wrong—or that the author is referring to the natural history museum in London or Los Angeles or San Diego—though not the museum in Oxford, which is the Oxford University Museum of Natural History (OUMNH) or, less often, the University of Oxford Museum of Natural History.

Q. The rules in CMOS 9.63 for abbreviating number ranges do not seem to be followed in one of the examples for a range of folio pages in 14.54: “fols. 176r–177v” (for the front and back of two consecutive leaves). Why isn’t “fols. 176r–77v” preferred? Thanks for your time and clarification.

A. In the abbreviated range 176–77, there’s little chance that a reader might think you’re referring to pages 176 and 77. But in 176r–77v, the intervening r makes it more likely that “77v” could be mistaken for a reference to the verso of page 77. So our editors decided to repeat the hundreds place for clarity. We’ll consider adding this exception to our rules for abbreviating inclusive numbers—along with any others that might be warranted—in a future edition of CMOS.

Q. Does the Chicago 18th (author-date style) use “para/paras” when referring to specific sections in websites? For instance, does the quotation that follows adhere to Chicago style? “APA Style provides a foundation for effective scholarly communication because it helps writers present their ideas in a clear, precise, and inclusive manner” (APA 2025, para. 1). Thank you!!

A. Yes, we do use those abbreviations; see CMOS 13.117, which shows how to cite a specific page, paragraph, section, volume, or the like in a parenthetical author-date citation in the text. The relevant example is this one:

(Claussen 2015, para. 2.15) or (Claussen 2015, ¶ 2.15)

For two paragraphs, you would use either “paras.” or “¶¶” (for these plural forms, see CMOS 7.15 and 10.49, respectively).

In your example, however, citing “para. 1” or “¶ 1” could be misleading because the paragraphs in the source you quote from aren’t numbered (see “About APA Style” at the APA Style website, archived September 3, 2025, at the Wayback Machine). Instead, you could refer to the first or opening paragraph in your text, but only if that information is relevant. If it’s not, then you don’t need to specify which paragraph; the source is relatively short, and the quoted text provides the key to its location on the page (via the Find tool in any browser). If you still want to add it to your citation, try this: (APA 2025, first para.).

For more on citing website content (including how to cite archived web pages), see CMOS 14.104. For abbreviating the names of organizations listed as authors in author-date citations, see 13.127.

Q. Do I cite a Substack post differently from a blog post? Or would it be cited like a website?

A. You can usually cite a Substack post like a blog post, with the name of the account (like the name of a blog) in italics (see also CMOS 14.105). Here’s an example in the form of a numbered note:

1. Elif Batuman, “Don’t Worry, Baby: Help from the Beach Boys,” The Elif Life, Substack, April 25, 2025, https://eliflife.substack.com/p/dont-worry-baby.