Q. CMOS 5.201 says that “compare with” should be used for literal comparisons and “compare to” for poetic or metaphorical comparisons. Does the same rule apply to “comparable”? My organization enforces “comparable with” because we follow CMOS and publish material that’s not remotely poetic. “With” sounds odd to me, though; Google Books Ngram shows that “comparable to” is used more than six times as often, and it’s been the more popular variant for almost 100 years [that’s true when British English is considered together with American English; in British English, “comparable with” was the more popular form until the mid-1970s.—CMOS editor]. Can I make a case for sticking with “comparable to”?
A. Yes, you can pair “comparable” with “to” rather than “with.” First, note that “compare” is included not only in the list at paragraph 5.201 (which covers words and the prepositions they’re paired with); it’s also covered in the usage glossary under CMOS 5.254, which has this to say: “To compare with is to discern both similarities and differences between things. To compare to is to liken things or to note primarily similarities between them, especially in the active voice.” The example often cited as evidence of the latter is a line from Shakespeare: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (Sonnet 18).
But “comparable” generally means “similar,” and it’s not a verb (so it can’t be said to be in the active voice). Even when it means “capable of or suitable for comparison” (the older sense of the word, as recorded in Merriam-Webster), it still carries the sense of likeness. True, there was a clear preference for most of the twentieth century in British English for the phrase “is not comparable with” (for things that are not alike), but for whatever reason (maybe that wording is too far removed from Shakespeare?), that’s not the case anymore.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. We are naming a maths series for classes 1 to 8 as ‘Revel in Maths’. The sales team is a little hesitant to accept this name as they find the word ‘revel’ associated with drinking and dancing. The general dictionary meaning of the phrasal verb ‘revel in something’ is ‘to take a great pleasure in something’. Kindly suggest an alternative.
A. As copyeditors accustomed to American English, we’re reveling in your “maths”—and in your single quotation marks (and the placement of periods relative to those marks). Seriously, though, a bit of revelry in the context of maths (or math) seems harmless to us, and unlikely to add up to anything resembling a bacchanal. If you must choose a different word, how about “Maths Is Fun”? To ensure everyone has an equally good time, including students with more of an aptitude for verbal than mathematical subjects, you could take an interdisciplinary detour into subject-verb agreement.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Is it alright to end a relative clause with a preposition, such as in the following: “The credit card you charge your rental fee to . . .”
A. Considering you’ve written alright rather than the standard all right, our answer would be yes (or yep). But seriously, even if you were to elevate your diction to a somewhat higher register of formality, the question you seek an answer to would still get a yes (and alright is all right with us outside formal, edited prose).
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I was taught to exclusively use third person in academic writing, especially in research papers. Now that I’m in university, I have seen increasing use of first person in essays and papers. I couldn’t find anything on this in CMOS or on the website. Is there any sort of guideline on when to use different perspectives? Or does choosing first, second, and third person in writing have little impact as long as a sense of professionalism is maintained?
A. The ninth edition of A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations—known as Turabian and intended as a CMOS for students—includes a section on first-person pronouns that begins as follows: “Almost everyone has heard the advice to avoid using I or we in academic writing. In fact, opinions differ on this point. Some teachers tell students never to use I, because it makes their writing ‘subjective.’ Others encourage using I as a way to make writing more lively and personal” (§ 11.1.7, p. 120).
Turabian then offers some guidelines: For example, try to avoid beginning your sentences with I believe or I think (which go without saying). And resist the temptation to provide a running commentary on your research (First I did this . . . Then I did this . . .). You should also avoid using the royal we to refer to yourself and the generic we to refer to people in general.
But the occasional use of first person—for example, to describe something that you in fact did or plan to do—can make writing sound less dogmatic. For more details (including why researchers avoid the first person to describe actions that must be replicated by other researchers), see § 11.1.7.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. How do you form a possessive of a “one of the” phrase? For example, a shout belonging to “one of the guards.” Placing the apostrophe at the end of “guards” seems to make multiple guards possess the shout. “Guard’s” seems to make it one of the shouts of a single guard. But if there are multiple guards, and one is shouting . . . where does the apostrophe go?
A. Our recommendation would be to rephrase to avoid the possessive—for example, by referring to “a shout from one of the guards.” Because you’re right, an apostrophe by itself won’t convey your intended meaning.
For example, you could write this: “One of the guards’ shouts could be heard above the din.” Restating that sentence reveals its meaning: “Of the guards’ shouts, one could be heard above the din.” There are multiple shouts from multiple guards (plural possessive), and one of these shouts in particular could be heard above the din—which is not, judging from your question, what you intend to say.
And you’re right about the version with apostrophe s, as in “one of the guard’s shouts.” As you say, that would suggest one shout from a single guard who is shouting—or maybe, depending on context, the shouts belonging to one of the guards. These are also not what you mean.
Again, rephrasing to avoid the possessive is your best bet. For a related scenario involving the phrase one of and verb agreement, see CMOS 5.62.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I’m pretty certain CMOS said to omit the “of” in month-year references (“he graduated in May 1999,” not “he graduated in May of 1999”), but I can’t for the life of me find this in the 17th edition. Is there a reason it is no longer covered? And do you have guidance?
A. We haven’t been able to find such a rule in earlier editions of CMOS, but according to Bryan Garner (author of CMOS chapter 5), it’s best to leave out “of”: “February 2010 is better than February of 2010”; see Garner’s Modern English Usage, 5th ed. (Oxford, 2022), under “Dates. B. Month and Year.”
That advice is presumably directed at writers and editors. In speech, adding an “of” between month and year is relatively common—and there’s nothing inherently wrong with doing so. Similarly, Chicago style is to write “July 5,” whereas people typically say “July 5th.” Rules intended for writing, which tend to favor precision, don’t always translate to speech.
[Editor’s update: It turns out that Garner’s advice is in the Manual after all. See the entry for of in the usage glossary at CMOS 5.250: “Avoid using this word needlessly after all, off, inside, and outside. Also, prefer June 2015 over June of 2015. To improve your style, try removing every of-phrase that you reasonably can.” Our focus on CMOS’s coverage of dates led us astray. Thank you to a reader for kindly bringing this to our attention.]
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Many of my clients (graduate students and researchers) want to use the term “post COVID” to mean “after the COVID-19 pandemic,” as in “Returning from Remote Work post COVID.” I believe this would make “post” a preposition, and that’s not one of the parts of speech for “post” listed in Merriam-Webster. The dictionary gives examples of “post” as a prefix for verbs, nouns, and adjectives. So “post-COVID symptoms” is fine, of course. It appears that using “post COVID” to mean “after the pandemic” has become installed in our everyday language due to the familiarity of “post-COVID” as a compound adjective. That doesn’t mean it can be used as a preposition, does it? You couldn’t say, for example, “I’m going jogging post breakfast.” So I think “I’m going back to the gym post COVID” is equally incorrect. What is your take on this? Thank you very much!
A. We agree that the prefix post- functions as a preposition when you remove the hyphen. But we also agree that it’s a little early to declare a post-post-as-prefix world, at least in edited prose intended for publication—though the OED does include the prepositional sense for post, dating it to 1965.
Instead, we’d advise keeping the hyphen and treating the compound as an adverb: “Returning from Remote Work Post-COVID.” Without the hyphen, Post is subject to a momentary misreading (possibly as a noun), and because it isn’t a typical preposition, lowercase “post” might look odd.
For what it’s worth, the OED’s examples of prepositional post seem relatively casual and potentially ambiguous (e.g., “Now, post the increase . . .”; “Post the Geneva meeting of Opec . . .”).* The term will be more familiar as a prefix, and you can keep the capital P.†
* In British style, it’s normal to spell acronyms with an initial cap (as in Opec for OPEC—or Covid for COVID).
† The OED records several post- adjectives that, like “Post-COVID” in the example headline above, can also be used as adverbs. Most of our readers would probably be familiar with the adverb post-publication. If not, get back to us post-lunch (another OED entry). (Chicago style would normally call for postpublication and postlunch, though some editors would retain a hyphen in one or both of those terms for the sake of clarity. For more on this subject, see “Prefixes: A Nonissue, or a Non-Issue?” at CMOS Shop Talk.)
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Does Chicago prefer “whosever” or “whoever’s”?
A. We’d follow the advice in Garner’s Modern English Usage, 5th ed. (2022): “Whosever is the traditionally correct form, but it’s very much on the wane. Whoever’s is now the preferred colloquial form” (see the entry “whoever; whomever: B. Possessive Forms”).
In other words, practically nobody uses whosever anymore, so you’re better off with whoever’s, at least in contexts that are less than formal. For example, Whoever’s [not Whosever] car is parked on the sidewalk needs to move it.
If the context is formal, however, you should probably avoid this awkward construction. Whoever is responsible for editing your prose [not Whoever’s job it is to edit your prose, and not Whosever job it is to edit your prose] will thank you, whoever you might be.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Dear CMOS! I have a grammar question that has thrown our small department into a tizzy. In a sentence like “There are an even number of kittens on the veranda,” we are evenly split (pun intended!) as to whether “There are” is correct since there are a plural number of kittens or “There is” is correct because the number is (see? “is”) even. We’ve checked Garner’s entry for “number of,” which seems to throw down in favor of “there are,” but those of us in the “there is” contingent aren’t convinced. Any light the CMOS team can shed on this?
A. The expression “a number of” is an idiomatic phrase that means “some” or “several,” which is why a plural verb would normally be expected after “a number of kittens” used by itself: A number of kittens [or Some kittens] are on the veranda—or, if you invert the sentence, There are a number of kittens [or some kittens] on the veranda.
But if you change a to the, the idiom goes away, and the focus switches to the word number itself, making a singular verb the correct choice: The number of kittens on the veranda is huge. If you then invert that, however, you’re back to the plural: A huge number of kittens are on the veranda. So far, we’re mostly in line with Garner’s Modern English Usage, 5th ed. (2022), under “number of.”
But huge in that inverted example keeps things idiomatically plural: A huge number of kittens simply means lots of kittens, an expression that requires a plural verb. An even number, by contrast, means just what it says: a number that’s even instead of odd. And though it isn’t one of the examples featured in Garner, an even number doesn’t seem to have an obvious plural idiomatic equivalent like some or lots that could replace it; therefore, a singular verb is arguably the better choice: There is an even number of kittens on the veranda.
In other words, the number of kittens on the veranda is even (🐈🐈🐈🐈) rather than odd (🐈🐈🐈), an observation that puts the number ahead of the kittens. Nothing is certain when it comes to kittens, but that’s our take.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Dear CMOS, As regards a foreign word that needs to remain in its original language in a lengthy comparative analysis, would you inflect this word so as to reflect its grammatical position in a sentence consistent with its inflection in the original language? The word at issue is Pflichtteilsberechtigter (roughly, a forced heir). In its original German, the singular of the word could be either Pflichtteilsberechtigte or Pflichtteilsberechtigter, depending on whether it is preceded, respectively, by a definite or an indefinite article. As a plural, it could be either Pflichtteilsberechtigten or Pflichtteilsberechtigte, depending on whether it is preceded, respectively, by a definite article or a zero article.
Consistent with German grammar, the word would be spelled/inflected as follows in these four sample sentences (the first two being singular usages and the second two plural usages): “A Pflichtteilsberechtigter enjoys special rights in German succession law. The Pflichtteilsberechtigte, the son of the deceased, sued the testamentary heir for a portion of the estate. Courts require Pflichtteilsberechtigte to submit certain forms. In the case at issue, the court required the Pflichtteilsberechtigten to first appear before a notary.”
Employing spellings consistent with German grammatical rules on inflection could potentially confuse readers unfamiliar with these rules (or leave them thinking the writer/editor has been careless!). But adopting a wholesale simplification (e.g., writing Pflichtteilsberechtigter whenever it is a singular usage and Pflichtteilsberechtigte whenever it is a plural usage and not further inflecting according to German grammar) could confuse—or at least annoy—those readers who will have an appreciation of German, which will likely be significant in this case. We look forward to any input you have to offer!
A. Extrapolating from CMOS 11.3, it’s usually best to inflect a non-English word that hasn’t been anglicized just as it would be in the original language, as when referring to more than one Blume (flower) as Blumen (flowers).
Accordingly, the examples in your second paragraph seem good to us, with one possible caveat. Out of context, it may not be obvious to all readers that “the Pflichtteilsberechtigten” in your last sentence is supposed to be plural. If necessary, you could rephrase—for example, as “each Pflichtteilsberechtigte,” where the German noun is now clearly singular (and inflected as it would be following the)—or whatever best conveys the intended meaning.
But you should consider explaining for your readers how these inflections work—for example, in a note the first time one of these terms appears in your text. The explanation near the beginning of your question (“In its original German, . . .”) could easily form the basis of such a note.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]