Proper way to write military technology terms

September 15, 2008 4:34 PM

How do you handle names of military technology in writing according to the rules of the Chicago Manual of Style?

I have terms such as:
60-pounder Parrot Type II shell
Navy Watercap
Ketchum hand grenade

I want to handle them all the same. Right now they are mostly capitalized and in quotes. I am going to get rid of the quotes... I feel compelled to go all lower-case in italics. I have looked in the book and on the website. Waaaaaah?

posted by Foam Pants to Writing & Language (10 answers total)

I have no idea how to handle this according to the Manual of style, but keep Parrott (note the spelling), Navy, and Ketchum capitalized. Parrott and Ketchum are people's names, and Navy is, well, the U.S. Navy.
posted by zsazsa at 4:46 PM on September 15, 2008

From my rememberance of my life with Chicago, the answer is: They are just nouns. How do you write Bowie knife or machine gun? Exactly. Capitalize the proper noun part and leave the rest lowercased, just as you would Girl Scout cookies vs. peanut butter cookies. I know when you are working with phrases that seem technical to you it is difficult to imagine how people will parse it and you wind up putting all sorts of doodads around your words. If you write clear sentences, people will parse just fine, even with all those funny terms.
posted by dame at 5:53 PM on September 15, 2008 [1 favorite]

Also capitalize code-names e.g. AH-64 Apache. In that case both "AH-64" and "Apache" are correctly capitalized, because they're proper names.

And in this particular case, do include the "AH-64", because "Apache" has been used for other weapon systems.
posted by Class Goat at 6:30 PM on September 15, 2008

The advice you have received above is spot on.

Avoid putting nouns in quotation marks. You will read like the Austin Powers clip about "lasers"....

:)
posted by Mephisto at 9:28 PM on September 15, 2008

When referring to military units, use digits, not words. "3rd Division" is correct. "Third Division" is wrong. This is exactly the opposite of the usual rule about small numbers.
posted by Class Goat at 10:01 PM on September 15, 2008

When referring to military units, use digits, not words. "3rd Division" is correct. "Third Division" is wrong. This is exactly the opposite of the usual rule about small numbers.

A book I was reading last night follows the convention of treating the number like a name, and copying it verbatim. Thus you can have a 16th Panzer Division, a 1st Guards Army, a Commander of the Sixth Army, the remnants of the 62nd and 64th Armies, a Fourth Panzer Army, an XIV Panzer Corps, and an XI Corps.
posted by Mike1024 at 12:40 AM on September 16, 2008

Department of Defense civilian employee here and not a professional writer. In DoD if they are or can become acronyms, we spell it out in the first instance and make it an acronym after.
posted by fixedgear at 2:21 AM on September 16, 2008

No quotes, no italics. (Italics below are accepted MeFi quoting style.)


Here's my quick take:

sixty-pounder Parrott type II shell

"Type" can be safely lowercased, although some might consider "Parrott Type II" to be a formal product name. Even so, if "type II" is used later by itself ("The type II shell, which . . .") I'd lowercase it. That first number should be spelled out.

navy watercap

This is tricky without being familiar with the material. Was "Watercap" a brand name or just a descriptor of the type of mechanism? A quick search revealed that it "employed a crooked channel so that the flame would travel faster than the water," so my guess is that it can be safely lowercased. If I came across while editing a book I'd research until I found a definitive answer. Also, "navy" lowercase. See Chicago 15th ed., 8.120.

Ketchum hand grenade

This looks fine.


If you are strictly following Chicago, division numbers, etc., are spelled out according to the normal rules (section 9). Section 8.120 gives examples.
posted by D.C. at 2:55 AM on September 16, 2008

I expect the people who provided the text are also over-capitalizing profession titles. See section 8.21–35.
posted by D.C. at 3:08 AM on September 16, 2008

There is an issue with sentence-initial ordinals (3rd or Third in that case?).
posted by joeclark at 3:09 PM on September 16, 2008