Q. Hi there. I’m wondering if you can resolve what seems to me to be a contradiction in the Manual. I’ve got short-form notes and a bibliography that include names with lowercased particles (e.g., du). CMOS 8.5 says the particle is “always capitalized when beginning a sentence or a note.” But CMOS 14.21 says, “A bibliography entry starts with a capital letter unless the first word would normally be lowercased (as in a last name that begins with a lowercase particle; see 8.5).” Sorry if I’m missing something, but aren’t these two sections contradicting each other? Or are short-form notes and bibliography entries really supposed to treat such names differently?
A. You’re not missing anything. In Chicago style, bibliography entries are listed alphabetically by author, and the name of the first-listed author for each source is inverted and styled exactly like entries in a Chicago-style index. Chicago’s preference is for index entries that begin lowercase, so particles like “du” in a name like Daphne du Maurier remain lowercase.
du Maurier, Daphne. The Scapegoat. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957.
Numbered notes, on the other hand, are treated like sentences and capitalized and punctuated accordingly. The first letter of the note is capitalized, and the facts of publication are separated by commas instead of periods (or placed within parentheses):
1. Daphne du Maurier, The Scapegoat (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957), 33.
Shortened notes are treated in the same way, so the “du” gets a capital D:
2. Du Maurier, Scapegoat, 121–22.
This treatment ensures that all notes—including discursive notes—will be consistent with each other (and with the text to which they refer):
3. Du Maurier’s other novels . . .
4. In 1938, du Maurier . . .