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.]
Q. Hi all, I’m wondering if “thai” in “pad thai” should be capitalized? Thank you!
A. The t in “pad thai,” like the first f in “french fry,” can remain lowercase. And though it’s common to encounter either term with an initial capital, our preference would still be to use lowercase. See CMOS 8.61 and the entries for french fry and pad thai in Merriam-Webster (terms entered in lowercase there but labeled “often capitalized” can usually remain lowercase).
See also our related answer about menu items.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. With the rise of verbs that have specific connotations in social media (like, follow, comment, etc.), how should they be styled? In this case, it’s important to specify the user take an action on a specific social media platform. My instinct is to capitalize: “Give the post a Like. Leave a Comment. Make sure to Follow the account.” Should I be using scare quotes instead, or are these terms ubiquitous enough that lowercase will be clear in an instructional sense? Thanks for your help!
A. In most types of prose, you can like, unlike, follow, friend, unfriend, and so on, no quotation marks, italics, or initial caps required. The same goes for nouns, whether you give a post a like (or a heart) or leave a comment. But if, as your question suggests, you’re writing instructions (as on a Help page), then we agree with your initial capitals, though not for everything.
We’d use capitalization only for direct references to the interface:
To react favorably to a post, click Like or Love.
To share, use the Share button.
To leave a comment, use the “Add a comment . . .” text box.
not
To leave a Comment, use the Add a comment . . . text box.
The capitalized words in the first three examples reflect how those terms appear in either Facebook or Instagram. But we’ve used quotation marks in the third example to enclose text that’s capitalized like a sentence; without the quotation marks, that phrase wouldn’t stand out from the surrounding text. Terms from other platforms will vary. For some related advice, see CMOS 7.79.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Are English translations of Native American terms for place-names treated like proper nouns and capitalized? For example, would you refer to Dook’o’oosłííd (Diné for Gleaming Summit)? Or should it be Dook’o’oosłííd (Diné for gleaming summit).
A. In your example, we would use lowercase and quotation marks for the translated term in parentheses (see also CMOS 11.5): Dook’o’oosłííd (Diné for “gleaming summit”). We’d capitalize it (and drop the quotation marks) only if the place is known in English by the translated name. For example, you might refer to Firenze (Italian for Florence).
Or, drawing on information from the US Forest Service (which translates Dook’o’oosłííd as “the summit which never melts” or “the mountain which peak never thaws”), you could refer to Dook’o’oosłííd (the Diné name for the San Francisco Peaks) or to the San Francisco Peaks (Dook’o’oosłííd in Diné).
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. In your follow-up answer to the question about capitalization for Rage Against the Machine, do you mean “eponymous” when you say “self-titled”? Arguably all albums are self-titled.
A. “Eponymous” and “self-titled” are related, but the latter has a specific sense that can apply to something like Rage Against the Machine (the album).
According to Merriam-Webster, something is eponymous when it is named for someone (or something), and that person (or thing) can also be said to be eponymous. For example, Rudolf Diesel was the eponymous inventor of the eponymous diesel engine. And yes, you could also say that Rage Against the Machine is Rage Against the Machine’s eponymous debut album.
But it’s also a self-titled album, which means that a musical group or other entity named (or titled) the album after itself (though someone else may have suggested the idea). So the terms self-titled and eponymous are related but not equivalent. The diesel engine may be named for Rudolf Diesel, but it wasn’t necessarily named by him; it’s eponymous, but it isn’t self-titled. (Besides, engines don’t have titles; they have names.)
If you need more evidence, the term self-titled is in the OED: “Of an album, CD, etc.: having a title that is the same as the performer’s or group’s name” (self-titled, sense 2). One of the quoted examples refers to “the Ramones’ self-titled [debut] album”—which is how we intended the term.
[Editor’s update: Though Merriam-Webster’s definition and accompanying usage note suggest that eponymous can refer to both a named entity and the source of that name, the term has traditionally referred only to the source—as in Rudolf Diesel (an eponym) but not the engine that bears his name. See Garner’s Modern English Usage, 5th ed. (Oxford, 2022), under “eponym; eponymous.” Thank you to our loyal readers for raising this point.]
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. In a recent Q&A, you discussed how to style the title of a musical group, Rage Against the Machine. But couldn’t you just look up what the original source uses?
A. You could do that, but there’s a limit to that approach. For example, you wouldn’t use a typewriter font and all lowercase letters with no italics when referring to the band’s self-titled debut album. Likewise, you wouldn’t write “Rage Against The Machine” (capital T in The), as the band’s name tends to be styled at their website—when it isn’t in all caps (as of February 4, 2024).
Such choices—whether creative or stylistic—are almost always overridden to match the style of the surrounding text. Even a name like boygenius, as that band styles its name, would be adjusted in Chicago style (in this case, to get a capital B).
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Should we apply headline-style capitalization to band names and other proper names containing prepositions? Is it Rage against the Machine or Rage Against the Machine, for example? Thank you!
A. Good question! Normally, yes, the capitalization rules for titles of books and other works (as described in CMOS 8.159) would apply equally to other capitalized names, including names of organizations and musical groups.
Accordingly, articles (a, an, the), common coordinating conjunctions (and, but, for, or, nor), and prepositions (of, for, with, etc.) would all be lowercased in the middle of a name. For example, the National Institutes of Health, Sly and the Family Stone—and Rage against the Machine.
But we’d allow an exception in that last case. Against may be a preposition, but it’s just as long as Machine, putting lowercase at odds with the rest of the name. And the sources that have written about that band would have tended to follow some variation of AP style (the main US style for journalists), which capitalizes prepositions of four letters or more. “Rage Against the Machine” is therefore more likely than “Rage against the Machine” to look right—at least to anyone who hasn’t just edited a forty-five-page bibliography to conform to Chicago style.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]