TCMOS – Names & Titles – Chapter 8

Sunday, December 22nd, 2019
Blog #7 of my learning from #TheChicagoManualOfStyle.

What’s in a name? Is it italicized, capitalized, or presented in a special format? To find out, read on.

Character’s Names

Capitalize proper nouns. If your characters are diverse and you use their full name, the country they hail from can decide the order and capitalization of middle names and alternate names. Here is the summary:

1. Capitalize and add a period for initials like J. K. Rowling unless the entire name is initials as follows: JFK
2. Don’t capitalize additions to a name: a participial, a maternal name, etc. that can appear in French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, or Spanish names. “Alexander von Humdolt”
3. If your character is Russian, check gender-specific spelling as the same name varies with gender.
4. For Arabic names, a prefix Abu, Ibn, al, or el is common
5. Asian names are spelled last name first and then first name. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc.

Titles and Offices

1. Civil, military, religious, and professional titles
   1. Titles such president, governor are lowercase unless used in a title address: “Barack Obama, the president of the United States”
   2. While “the President, Barack Obama . . .” works, avoid using the prefix/title president in formal prose.
   3. But the title used by itself to address people is capitalized:
      1. Mr. President
      2. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Prime Minister
2. Political divisions / public offices
   1. A republican or democratic party is lowercase. But he is a Republican. Capitalize party affiliation. The Green Party. Some members of the left-wing are the Far Left
   2. Lake County is capitalized
   3. The Oval Office, the West Wing of the White House, the Empire Room (but room 201)
   4. The Egyptian pyramids or the Pyramids
   5. Certain words are lowercase when singular and capitalized when plural:
      1. A Chrysler building verses Chrysler Buildings
   6. “Speaker” is best capitalized. Speaker of the House of Representative.
   7. The chief justice (lowercase). The judge. But the Honorable Judge Teresa Fedor
   8. Government bodies: Capitalize Offices but lowercase the adjectives: the city council. The British Parliament. (but an early parliament) the Crown. The United States Post Office or the post office changes the case.
   9. Capitalize judicial bodies. The Supreme Court. But city hall is all lowercase.
3. Don’t capitalize titles used in apposition. The Argentinian-born pope Francis.
4. Sovereigns: lowercase unless part of address. King Abdullah II, the king of Jordan.
5. Similarly, religious titles and military titles and ranks are lower case. The chief of police, the sheikh, the guru, the archbishop
6. Corporate and academic titles are lowercase unless abbreviated. The chief executive officers; the director; the professor, the principal
7. Degrees are lowercased. A master’s degree. A bachelor’s in computer science.
8. Rules on titles of nobility vary. The Prince of Wales but the baronet, the knight are lowercase.
9. Capitalize honorific titles. The Queen Mother. Your Honor. First Lady. Your Royal Highness. Mahatma Gandhi. But sir, ma’am, my lady, my lord are lowercase even inside a dialogue. “Is that okay, sir.”
10. General rule: are you addressing a relative or referring to them? That will determine the case of the kinship. “Are you okay, Aunt Maud?” I adore aunt Maud. Dad and mom are capitalized when addressed in a dialogue, otherwise lowercase.
11. Reference to class, sexual orientation, generation, physical characterizations as all lowercase: the homeless. A blue-collar worker; lesbians; baby boomer; but Generation X is an exception to the rule;
12. Geography
    1. Capitalize “parts of the world” as they are proper nouns. The Netherlands. South China Sea. And regions are capitalized as well. Swiss Alps. In central Europe. But the equator is not capitalized.
    2. The region North is capitalized but not the direction of going north
    3. The North Pole but p in the poles is lowercase
    4. Don’t capitalize Urban areas like the city unless it’s an official title like Greater London
    5. Capitalize names of mountain
    6. Capitalize rivers: The Nile; The Nile River valley
    7. The Pacific coast
13. Words derived from proper noun: (lowercase)
    1. The brussels sprouts
    2. A herculean effort (h of herculean is lowercase)
    3. The morocco leather
14. Oaths are lowercase: oath of allegiance.
15. Subjects are lowercase: history unless it’s a name of a class. History 101
16. Names of series of lectures are capitalized but individuals are enclosed in quotation marks

Time

1. Days of the week are capital
2. Seasons are lowercase
3. Months are capital
4. Named holidays are capital. Lincoln’s Birthday. But a bank holiday is lowercase
5. Time zones:  lowercase (unless abbreviated). The eastern standard time; EST
6. Centuries: – lowercase
   1. The twenty-first century but the Egyptian Dynasty
   2. Periods are lowercase too. The colonial period
   3. But traditional period names like the Dark Ages are capitalized
   4. So are “Ice Age” “Bronze Age” that belong in the past. Modern periods are lowercase like the nuclear age.
      Tip: When in doubt on an era, lowercase.

Religious

1. God is capital in all languages
2. So are alternate descriptions of God. The Almighty. The Supreme Being.
3. So are prophets. The Buddha.
4. So are platonic ideas in religious sense. The One.
5. So are religious groups. Islam. Muslim. Sikhs.
6. So are scripture. The Bhagavad Gita. The Holy Bible.
7. So are places of worship’s proper nouns. That is, The Golden Temple; a temple.
8. But church is lowercase.
9. But heaven and hell or paradise and other divine dwelling terms are lowercase.
10. So are religious rites lowercase -> bar mitzvah
11. So are objects used in religious activities lowercase. A rosary, the altar, sanctuary.

Names of Ships

Names of ships are capitalized and italicized. Phoenix.  

The Universe

1. Names of galaxies, stars, planets, etc. are capital. The Milky Way. The North Star.
2. But the solar system is lowercase.
3. The earth is flat and revolves around the sun, and the moon. Note the case in “The rocket made it safely back to Earth.”
4. The words sun and moon are usually lowercase as the example above shows.
5. Laws and theories are lowercase. The big bang theory.

Titles of Works

1. Published or not? It matters. For unpublished books, set those in roman type, capitalized headline-style, and enclosed in quotation marks. I have written “Letters from the Queen,” “Land of Dreams,” “The Meaningful Rejection,” and “The Summer of his Life.” But after I publish these or get under contract, supposedly with the same name, they’ll be italicized. Letters from the Queen. Land of Dreams.
2. To repeat: Titles of published books, plays, magazines (ChicagoGoers magazine), and movies are capitalized headline-style, and italicized. Headline-style capitalization includes:
   1. Capitalize all nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and some conjunctions
   2. Lowercase a, an, and the
   3. Lowercase prepositions
   4. Lowercase common coordinating conjunctions (and, but, for, or, and nor).
   5. Capitalize the send element of a hyphenated spelled-out number (Twenty-Two)
   6. Titles of chapters and shorter works are not italicized but set in roman and enclosed in quotation marks
3. When referring to titles in other work, follow these other rules:
   1. Capitalization and hyphenation can be altered to fit the surroundings
   2. Titles are singular. “Letters from the Queen” is a romance suspense novel.
   3. Initial “a, an, or the” can be dropped if it doesn’t fit the surrounding text.
4. Magazine: Note the following capitalization and lowercase of the word “magazine” in two fiction sentences.
   1. She worked at the Chicagogoers magazine before she lost her memory.
   2. The news of her memory loss was published in the New York Times Magazine. In the second sentence the word “magazine” is part of the official title. In the first example, its not.
5. Poems: Titles of poems, folktales, fables, nursery rhymes are set in roman type and enclosed in double quotes.
6. Blog titles:Named blogs can be italicized

My Takeaway

I skipped over the scientific and medical terms, leaving those to return to TCMOS when needed as a reference.

It’s nice to know how names of things take different shapes when being referred to. Done with names; next week, it’ll be numbers—chapter 9 of TCMOS. And in between, there’s Christmas. Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas. Stay safe and warm.

Source: The Chicago Manual of Style, SEVENTEEN EDITION.

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