July Q&A from the Chicago Manual of Style
https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/latest.html
New Questions and Answers
Q. I copyedit a technical journal, and I have a question about how CMOS would handle the term “Fortune 500.” Is “Fortune” (as the name of a publication) set in italics while “500” is not, or is “Fortune 500” treated as a standalone brand or fixed term akin to a trademark, where “Fortune” would be set roman? Thanks.
A. That term could go either way, but we’d refer to it as the Fortune 500, without italics for “Fortune,” following CMOS 8.174: “When the title of a newspaper or periodical is part of the name of a building, organization, prize, or the like, it is not italicized.”
The Fortune 500 (an annual ranking of the top 500 companies in the United States published by Fortune magazine) is analogous to a prize, and the fact that the word “Fortune” is part of the name of the list is what determines our choice.
The Billboard Hot 100 presents a similar case. Some editors would style that as the Billboard Hot 100. But we’d use italics only if referring to that list in terms of the magazine that publishes it, as in Billboard magazine’s Hot 100, or Billboard’s Hot 100 for short.
Q. Which is correct: “one should do one’s duty” or “one should do his or her duty”—or, using singular they, “one should do their duty”?
A. In your example, one is closer to the personal pronoun you than to the indefinite pronoun everyone. Everyone would normally pair with his, her, or singular their, as in everyone should do their duty (see also CMOS 5.51). One, by contrast, can simply switch to the possessive case like other such pronouns:
I should do my duty; you should do your duty; he should do his duty; she should do her duty; they should do their duty; we should do our duty; one should do one’s duty
According to Bryan Garner, however, writers have tended to pair one with he (and, by extension, one with his), despite objections from “strict grammarians” and others (see Garner’s Modern English Usage, 5th ed. [Oxford, 2022], under “One . . . he”).
We can only hope, then, that we’re doing our duty as arbiters of style by recommending a pairing of one with one’s.
One more, I love their comment “ It can be hard to ignore Microsoft Word’s blue underlines, especially when they’re worded in a way that suggests you’d be wrong to keep the text as is: ‘After an introductory word or phrase, a comma is best.’”
“Q. Hello, Chicago. Thanks for your time. I’d like you to confirm the optional comma after a one-word adverb of time (tonight, yesterday, today) starting a sentence. One of my fiction authors is upset because Word is showing blue lines under those words. I told her a comma is optional and Word doesn’t get the nuances. Would you please confirm this so I can calm my jittery author? Thanks again.
A. It can be hard to ignore Microsoft Word’s blue underlines, especially when they’re worded in a way that suggests you’d be wrong to keep the text as is: “After an introductory word or phrase, a comma is best.”
But you can tell your author that we agree with you. In the words of CMOS 6.34, “Although an introductory adverbial phrase can usually be followed by a comma, it need not be unless misreading is likely. Shorter adverbial phrases are less likely to merit a comma than longer ones.”
The adverbs yesterday, tonight, and today aren’t phrases, but each of them derives from one (yesterday comes from Old English giestran dæg), and it’s clear that each is grammatically equivalent to a phrase like next week or in 1965. Plus, any one of these words would qualify as short in the context of introductory adverbial phrases.
To be fair to Word, tonight is the only one among the words and phrases mentioned above (from yesterday through in 1965) that Word’s grammar checker flagged in our tests when it wasn’t followed by a comma (as of July 1, 2025). Conversely, Word didn’t stop on any of them when they were followed by a comma. So it’s not that far out of line with CMOS.
Tip: To avoid falling under the influence of Word’s blue underlines, some writers prefer to toggle them off as they draft.
A convenient way of doing this is to add a button to the ribbon. In Word for Windows (the desktop version), go to File > Options > Customize Ribbon. Then select All Commands under “Choose commands from” and scroll down until you find Hide Grammar Errors. You can then add that command to a new group under the Home tab (or wherever you want it to appear). Steps for Word for Mac will be similar.
If you use the option under Customize Ribbon to assign a keyboard shortcut to the equivalent command (look for ToolsGrammarHide under the All Commands category in the separate dialog box for keyboard shortcuts), keep the button, which has the important advantage of showing whether it’s on or off (via shading/outline).