Q. Merriam-Webster lists “fact-check” as a verb (with a hyphen). But what about when it’s used as a noun—as in, “Oh no, not another fact check!” My guess is that it’s not hyphenated, but I would like to see an entry on this. Thank you.

A. We agree with your guess, so we turned to the OED for confirmation. That dictionary includes an entry for “fact-check” as a verb (with a hyphen) and another for “fact check” as a noun (no hyphen).

Interestingly, the noun and verb forms both first appeared in 1965, but in separate publications (according to the quotations in the OED entries). The verb appeared in a classified ad in the Chicago Tribune on February 7: “Loop encyclopedia needs science-oriented person to fact-check manuscripts”; the noun showed up in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review (vol. 113, no. 8, p. 1175): “Where more than a superficial fact check is required, the type of data typically provided in a presentence report is what might be desired.”

That job opening in the Loop sounds intriguing. If we had more time, we might do a fact check to find out which encyclopedia that was.

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.

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.

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.

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).

Q. When referring to the title of an article that incorrectly uses single quotation marks around the name of a movie or book, is it OK to silently change those to italics (in text, bib, and notes)? Thanks!

A. Quotation marks within an article title are normally retained when that title is mentioned or cited. For example, you might refer to the New Yorker article by Lauren Michele Jackson that was published online on March 26, 2024, with the following title:

We’d refer to this title by putting the whole thing in double quotation marks: “Percival Everett’s Philosophical Reply to ‘Huckleberry Finn.’ ”

Note that we’ve made two adjustments in our version of the title: (1) the all caps of the original have been changed to initial caps according to the rules outlined in CMOS 8.159, and (2) the double quotation marks, which follow New Yorker style for setting off the title of a novel (where Chicago specifies italics), have been changed to single—but we didn’t delete them.

And in some cases, quotation marks are added to a title within a title—even for titles of books and movies and the like, which would normally get italics in Chicago style. For example, a title page in a book might read as follows:

Title of a Book on Shakespeare’s Hamlet

But when mentioning or citing this title, we’d do this (see CMOS 14.94):

Title of a Book on Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”

In sum, don’t assume quotation marks are always wrong for the title of a book or the like, even in Chicago style. See also CMOS 6.11.

Q. Sorry I’m so confused, but what is the difference between a bibliography and a reference list?

A. Generally speaking, a bibliography and a reference list are the same thing: a list of sources that appears at the end of an article or a book or at the end of a chapter or other component in a book or other work.

But we reserve the term reference list for sources that have been cited using Chicago’s author-date style; each source in a reference list corresponds to at least one parenthetical reference in the text.

Text (parenthetical citation plus page number):

The study concluded that the example was nonliteral, or “for illustration only” (Smith 2024, 33).

Reference list entry (note the position of the date):

Smith, Emily. 2024. A Mock Guide to Invented Prose. City, ST: Big Name University Press.

Sources listed in a bibliography are like the sources in a reference list, but they’re in notes-bibliography style, not author-date.

Bibliography entry (again, note the position of the date):

Smith, Emily. A Mock Guide to Invented Prose. City, ST: Big Name University Press, 2024.

The text will typically cite that same source in a footnote or endnote (or in the text itself). If the citation is in shortened form, readers can consult the alphabetically arranged bibliography for the full form of the citation.

Text and note:

The study concluded that the example was nonliteral, or “for illustration purposes only.”¹

1. Smith, A Mock Guide, 33.

Another difference is that bibliographies may list sources that haven’t been directly cited in the text; conversely, sources cited in the text don’t always need to be included in a bibliography. For more details on this subject, see chapters 14 and 15, starting with paragraph 14.2.