Q. I thought Chicago style used to say to use only an apostrophe for the possessive of a name like “Harris” that ends in “s.” Am I imagining things?
A. You’re not imagining things, but Harris’ hasn’t been Chicago style since the late 1960s. The first edition of CMOS (1906) advised using an apostrophe alone to form the possessive of “proper names of more than one syllable ending in s or another sibilant”; for one-syllable names, the rule was the same as for names that didn’t end in a sibilant—that is, add an apostrophe plus an s. In other words, you would write “King James’s Version,” “Burns’s poems,” and “Marx’s theories” (one-syllable names), but “Moses’ law,” “Demosthenes’ orations,” and “Berlioz’ compositions” (names with two or more syllables, a category that Harris belongs to). See paragraph 103 in the first edition.
Except for a couple of clarifications for names like Charlevoix and Horace (both of which would get an ’s), the original rule remained in place until 1969, when the twelfth edition was published. That edition eliminated all but a few exceptions to the ’s convention: “Exceptions are the names Jesus and Moses and Greek (or hellenized) names of more than one syllable ending in es”—as in “Jesus’ nativity,” “Moses’ leadership,” and “Xerxes’ army” (12th ed., ¶ 6.8).
The sixteenth edition (2010) then eliminated all remaining exceptions (including one for names ending in a silent s that had been added to the fifteenth edition [2003]), and that’s where CMOS stands today—that is, add an apostrophe plus an s to form the possessive of any person’s name, regardless of number of syllables or ancient pedigree.
So whether you’re referring to “Moses’s leadership” or (to bring things up to date) “Harris’s speech”—or, yes, “Walz’s speech,” though single-syllable names ending in z were never in question—Chicago’s rule for forming the possessive of a person’s name is now the same for all.
For more details, start with CMOS 7.17.
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.
Q. Is it JD Vance or J.D.? I’m having a dispute with an editor who claims to follow Chicago style and she insists on J.D.
A. In Chicago style, initials in a person’s name normally get periods; a nonbreaking space separates consecutive initials. Accordingly, our style would be “J. D. Vance”—as in a bibliography entry for the book Hillbilly Elegy, where the author’s name would be inverted: “Vance, J. D.” We’d add that space even though “J.D. Vance,” with periods but no space, is how the name is credited in that book (as in the 2016 Harper edition). (Unspaced initials with periods is a common style, though published books seem more likely to follow Chicago style, as this n-gram from Google comparing “T. S. Eliot” with “T.S. Eliot” suggests.)
But when initials are used alone, Chicago style says to use no spaces or periods, as in FDR (for Franklin Delano Roosevelt). And we make other exceptions—for example, for pen names (as in H.D., with periods but no spaces, for the poet Hilda Doolittle) or stage names (as in LL Cool J, no periods or spaces). So if Vance himself prefers “JD Vance” (i.e., without periods or spaces), as this Wall Street Journal article from July 17, 2024, suggests, then it’s OK to use that form, at least for mentions in the text. In a bibliography or reference list, on the other hand, you could follow Chicago style, assuming the cited sources themselves include periods (see also CMOS 13.75).
Q. Is it acceptable to hyphenate an approximate measurement? Here are some examples: “I boxed up two-hundred-something widgets.” “It will take five-or-so days to complete.” “I need two-and-a-half months for a project of that scope.” (A half month is not a specific number of days.) Thank you for your help!
A. Hyphenation isn’t normally related to how exact a measurement might be. In your three examples, we’d apply no hyphens but one en dash (for the widgets):
I boxed up two hundred–something widgets.
It will take five or so days to complete.
I need two and a half months for a project of that scope.
According to Merriam-Webster, the word something in the sense you’ve used it—“some indeterminate amount more than a specified number”—is a combining form that connects to other words with a hyphen, as in “twenty-something years old.” When joined to the open compound “two hundred,” it gets an en dash in Chicago style (see CMOS 6.86). The other expressions of approximation in the examples above—“or so” and “and a half”—are ordinary phrases that don’t require hyphens.
Q. If a word is used as a word but presented in all caps (or small caps), should it still be italicized or set in quotation marks (per CMOS 7.66)? For example: Fill in the squares with the letters that spell out BINGO. Or: Fill in the squares with the letters B, I, N, G, and O. In the latter case, the letters would be italicized. But putting the letters and the word in all caps and also italicizing them feels like overkill to me. It looks hideous. HELP!
A. Don’t worry, your editorial instincts align with ours. Capital letters, like italics and quotation marks, are very good at distinguishing a letter, word, or phrase from its surroundings. So unless you’re quoting from a specific source, please feel free to refer to the letters in bingo exactly as you’ve done in your question (both individually and when combined to form a word). Such an exception would be similar to the ones for the letter grades A–F (see CMOS 7.68) and the expression “the three R’s” (note the apostrophe; see 7.15 in the 18th ed. of CMOS).
Q. I often check dates and times for accuracy and have come across this question multiple times. If it is midnight, does that time belong to the day that is ending or the day that is beginning? For example, if it is 11:59 p.m. on April 12, and then it turns to be 12:00 a.m., should that 12:00 a.m. be noted as being on April 12? or April 13? I’ve seen it done both ways. Thanks!
A. You’re right: We can’t really know what day 12:00 a.m. refers to. So unless it’s clear from context, it’s best to specify both, as in 12:00 a.m., April 12–13—or, better yet, midnight, April 12–13. Because even though 12:00 a.m. is usually understood to mean midnight and 12:00 p.m. noon, both of those expressions are potentially ambiguous, at least outside of calendar apps and the like (see CMOS 9.40).
The twenty-four-hour system has a slight advantage here, but you still need two separate numbers. In that system, midnight on April 12 would be expressed as 2400 hours, whereas the beginning of April 13 would be 0000 hours. Those times are identical, but the numbers used to express them—and the dates they refer to—are different. See also CMOS 9.41.
Q. If a sentence includes quotations from different pages which are out of order (say a quotation from page 11 and then a quotation from page 3), should the citation in the footnote list the pages chronologically or in the order in which the quoted material appeared in the sentence?
A. The order of specific page number references in a footnote should correspond to the sequence of quotations in the sentence. The logic is the same as it is for multiple references to different sources in the same note, which, according to CMOS 13.61, “must appear in the same order as the text material (whether works, quotations, or whatever) to which they pertain.” But multiple sources in a note are usually separated by semicolons; multiple page numbers, unless they’re expressed as a range, are usually separated by commas (as shown in 13.22).