A manual for writers of research papers, theses, and dissertations, Ninth edition - Kate L. Turabian 2018
Names
Names, special terms, and titles of works
Style
22.1 Names
22.1.1 People, Places, and Organizations
22.1.2 Historical Events, Cultural Terms, and Designations of Time
22.1.3 Other Types of Names
22.2 Special Terms
22.2.1 Terms from Other Languages
22.2.2 Words Defined as Terms
22.3 Titles of Works
22.3.1 Capitalization
22.3.2 Italics or Quotation Marks
22.3.3 Punctuation
This chapter offers general guidelines for presenting names, special terms, and titles of works, including advice on when to use capital letters and when to use quotation marks or italic type (as opposed to regular roman type) to set off words, phrases, or titles.
If you are writing a thesis or dissertation, your department or university may have specific requirements for presenting names, special terms, and titles. Those requirements are usually available from the office of theses and dissertations. If you are writing a class paper, your instructor may also ask you to follow certain principles for presenting such items. Review these requirements before you prepare your paper. They take precedence over the guidelines suggested here. For style guides in various disciplines, see the bibliography.
22.1 Names
Proper nouns, or names, are always capitalized, but it is sometimes difficult to distinguish a name from a generic term. This section covers the most common cases. For more detailed information, see chapter 8 of The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition (2017).
In text, names are normally presented in roman type, but there are a few exceptions noted in 22.1.3.
22.1.1 People, Places, and Organizations
In general, capitalize the first letter in each element of the names of specific people, places, and organizations. However, personal names that contain particles (such as de and van) or compound last names may vary in capitalization. When in doubt, consult the biographical listings from Merriam-Webster or another reliable authority. Prepositions (of) and conjunctions (and) that are parts of names are usually lowercase, as is the when it precedes a name. For possessive forms of names, see 20.2. For abbreviations with names, see 24.2. For names with numbers, see 23.1.6.
✵ Eleanor Roosevelt
✵ W. E. B. Du Bois
✵ Ludwig van Beethoven
✵ Victoria Sackville-West
✵ Chiang Kai-shek
✵ Sierra Leone
✵ Central America
✵ New York City
✵ the Atlantic Ocean
✵ the Republic of Lithuania
✵ the United States Congress
✵ the State Department
✵ the European Union
✵ the University of North Carolina
✵ the Honda Motor Company
✵ Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
✵ the University of Chicago Press
✵ the National Conference for Community and Justice
✵ the Roman Catholic Church
✵ the Allied Expeditionary Force
A professional title that immediately precedes a personal name is treated as part of the name and should be capitalized. If you use the title alone or after the personal name, it becomes a generic term and should be lowercased. The same principle applies to other generic terms that are part of place or organization names.
✵ President Harry Truman announced |
✵ the president announced |
✵ Professors Liu and Prakash wrote |
✵ the professors wrote |
✵ next to the Indian Ocean |
✵ next to the ocean |
✵ students at Albion College |
✵ students at the college |
Names of ethnic and national groups are also capitalized. Terms denoting socioeconomic level, however, are not. (For hyphenation of compounds of both types, see 20.3.2.)
✵ Arab Americans
✵ Latinos
✵ the middle class
✵ white-collar workers
Capitalize adjectives derived from names, unless they have lost their literal associations with particular persons or places and have become part of everyday language.
✵ Machiavellian scheme
✵ Roman and Arabic art
✵ french fries
✵ roman and arabic numerals
22.1.2 Historical Events, Cultural Terms, and Designations of Time
The names of many historical periods and events are traditionally capitalized; more generic terms usually are not, unless they include names. Follow the conventions of your discipline.
✵ the Bronze Age
✵ the Depression
✵ the Industrial Revolution
✵ Prohibition
✵ the Seven Years’ War
✵ ancient Rome
✵ the nineteenth century
✵ the Shang dynasty
✵ the colonial period
✵ the baby boom
Nouns and adjectives designating cultural styles, movements, and schools are generally capitalized only when derived from names or when they need to be distinguished from generic terms (as in Stoicism). Again, follow the conventions of your discipline.
✵ classical
✵ impressionism
✵ modernism
✵ deconstruction
✵ Aristotelian reasoning
✵ Dadaism
✵ Hudson River school
✵ Romanesque architecture
Names of days of the week, months, and holidays are capitalized, but names of seasons are not. For more on date systems, see 23.3.
✵ Tuesday
✵ September
✵ Independence Day
✵ spring
22.1.3 Other Types of Names
Other types of names also follow specific patterns for capitalization, and some require italics.
✵ ▪ Academic courses and subjects. Capitalize the names of specific courses but not of general subjects or fields of study, except for the names of languages.
o Archaeology 101
o Topics in Victorian Literature
o art history
o English literature
✵ ▪ Acts, treaties, and government programs. Capitalize the formal or accepted titles of acts, treaties, government programs, and similar documents or entities, but lowercase informal or generic titles.
o the United States (or US) Constitution
o the Treaty of Versailles
o Head Start
o the due process clause
o the treaty
✵ ▪ Brand names. Capitalize the brand names of products, but do not use the symbol ® or ™ after such a name. Unless you are discussing a specific product, however, use a generic term instead of a brand name.
o Coca-Cola o Xerox o iPhone |
o cola o photocopy o smartphone |
✵ ▪ Electronic technology. Capitalize branded names of computer hardware and software, networks, browsers, systems, and languages. Most terms that are not trademarked (such as internet), however, can be lowercased, as can generic terms (such as web) when used alone or in combination with other generic terms.
o Apple iOS 11; iPhone
o the Camera app in iOS 11; a camera app
o the Kindle app for Android; Kindle
o Google Chrome
o the internet
o the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C); World Wide Web; the web; website; web page
✵ ▪ Legal cases. Capitalize and italicize the names of legal cases; italicize the v. (versus). You may shorten the case name after a full reference to it (usually to the name of the plaintiff or the nongovernmental party). For citations of legal cases, see 17.11.7 and 19.11.7.
First reference |
Subsequent references |
o Miranda v. Arizona |
o Miranda |
o United States v. Carlisle |
o Carlisle |
✵ ▪ Ships, aircraft, and other vessels and vehicles. Capitalize and italicize the names of ships, individual aircraft, and the like. If the names are preceded by an abbreviation such as USS (United States ship) or HMS (Her [or His] Majesty’s ship), do not italicize these abbreviations or use the word ship in addition to the name. Capitalize makes, models, and classes of other vehicles but do not italicize them.
o USS Constitution
o HMS Saranac
o Spirit of St. Louis
o the space shuttle Atlantis
o Boeing 787 Dreamliner
o Subaru Forester
✵ ▪ Plants and animals. In papers in the humanities and social sciences, do not capitalize the names of plants and animals unless they include other proper nouns, such as geographical names. Binomial Latin species names should be italicized, with the genus name capitalized and the species name (or specific epithet) lowercase. The names of phyla, orders, and such should be in roman type. For papers in the sciences, follow the conventions of your discipline.
o rhesus monkey
o Rocky Mountain sheep
o Rosa caroliniana
o Chordata