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 8.4 says the particle is capitalized “if it begins a sentence or a note (but lowercase if it begins a bibliography entry).” Sorry if I’m missing something, but aren’t these two things contradicting each other? Or are 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. 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 (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 . . .