Q. Is it “the angel Gabriel” or “the Angel Gabriel”?
A. Though it’s not exactly a job title, an angel can usually be treated like a writer or a poet relative to capitalization: Just as you would refer to the writer Jane Austen or the poet Maya Angelou (lowercase w and p), you’d refer to the angel (or archangel) Gabriel (lowercase a).
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Why are heaven and hell not capitalized like any other named noun? Assuming that these religious terms refer to a place (even if they are metaphorical or metaphysical) why would they not be capitalized like any Walmart? Is capitalization not applied to any specific, named place?
A. Both of those terms are entered with a lowercase h in Merriam-Webster and the OED, and lowercase is the more common form for both in published documents going back more than two hundred years (as this Google Ngram suggests).
Starting with the metaphorical, if you were to write that you were “in Heaven” thanks to an especially tasty milkshake and that you’d have “a Hell of a time” finding anything as good again, those initial caps would stand out as oddly literal. But when these same two words are used in their traditional senses in the context of theology, initial caps would seem normal, especially for Heaven (which Merriam-Webster labels “often Heaven”—capital H—for the religious meanings).
Even if the context isn’t religious, initial caps would still be perfectly appropriate for either term whenever a religious meaning is implied, even loosely, especially if that’s your preference.
See also CMOS 8.110.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Is the term “Clouds of Glory” (the specific ones that accompanied the Israelites in the desert) a proper noun? And if it is, would you capitalize the transliterated term? E.g.: “The Ananei HaKavod (Clouds of Glory) protected the Israelites as they traveled through the desert.”
A. Unless your sources suggest a clear preference for or against initial capitals for that term, it’s up to you. Whichever you choose, capitals or lowercase, you can usually do the same for the transliterated Hebrew. Lowercase: “ananei hakavod (clouds of glory).” Initial capitals: “Ananei HaKavod (Clouds of Glory).” (Some sources capitalize the Hebrew term as either Ananei haKavod or Ananei Hakavod.) See also CMOS 11.103.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Do you recommend capitalizing offices such as the Office of the Attorney General and the Office of the City Clerk? These are formal names for administrative bodies, but they are shared names. In other words, every city has an Office of the City Clerk.
A. You can usually use initial caps for the name of a specific office but lowercase when referring to such an office as a generic term or concept. For example, we’d advise lowercase for your last sentence, where the use is clearly generic: “Every city has an office of the city clerk.”
The main reason for lowercase in that last sentence is that “Office of the City Clerk” may not reflect the wording used by each such office. Here are a few more examples:
Illinois’s Office of the Attorney General was established in 1818.
The Office of the City Clerk for Chicago can be found at City Hall.
Portugal’s Ministry of Finance (Ministério das Finanças) is headquartered in Lisbon.
but
In many countries, the treasury department is known as the ministry of finance.
Most states have an office of the attorney general.
The city clerk’s office is on the first floor.
See also CMOS 8.63–71.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
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.]