Period Piece: How Should We Be Printing J.D. Vance’s Name?

A simple question with a surprisingly complicated answer.

Before we get started: This post is about a politician’s name, but it is not about politics. If you post a comment, please keep the discussion free of partisanship. Thanks! — Paul

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Last Thursday, July 17, two days after U.S. Senator J.D. Vance was chosen as the 2024 Republican vice presidential nominee, The Wall Street Journal ran a story that addressed a small but important detail about the new veep candidate. Here’s the pertinent passage:

Pick up a copy of Hillbilly Elegy, the 2016 memoir about small-town America, and you’ll see “J.D. Vance” on the cover as author.

This week, the same Vance was picked as Donald Trump’s running mate. And he’s “JD Vance” (no periods) now.

Our Washington bureau checked with Vance’s office and confirmed that the no-periods style is his preference (the initials stand for James David) — and our newsroom is now using that approach.

Until now, the WSJ stylebook hadn’t explicitly addressed such no-period initials before a last name. It did, however, already say that full-name abbreviations using just the initials of an individual don’t take periods: JFK, LBJ. So it isn’t a great leap to drop the periods for a first and middle name if the individual prefers it.

It’s not clear exactly when Vance stopped using the periods in his name, or why. As the Journal noted, the periods still appear on the cover of Hillbilly Elegy, which was published in 2016. But when Vance ran for a U.S. Senate seat six years later, his campaign graphics did not include the periods:

The Journal piece wrapped up by saying, “While JD is now our rule in news articles, there won’t be universal agreement or consistency on this among news organizations.” That prediction has turned out to be accurate, as Vance’s name is currently being styled in at least three distinct ways across the media landscape. First, there are the outlets that, like the Journal, are going without any periods:

Then there are the sites that use periods:

Finally, there are the sites that have periods but also add a space between the two letters, so it’s “J. D.” instead of “J.D.”:

There’s nothing new about different media outlets having their own style guidelines, of course, but it’s interesting to see that there’s so little consistency for such a high-profile person (especially since any news outlet could simply ask Vance’s people for guidance, like the Journal did). I was curious to see how these three different approaches to Vance’s name stacked up, so I looked up articles about him on 30 different media websites with national or international audiences. Here’s what I found:

• ABC News: No periods.

• Associated Press: No periods.

• The Atlantic: Periods and a space.

• BBC: No periods.

• Bloomberg: No periods.

• CBS News: No periods.

• CNN: No periods.

• The Economist: Periods, no space.

• Forbes: No periods.

• Fox News: No periods.

• The Guardian: No periods.

• The Hill: No periods.

• HuffPost: No periods.

• L.A. Times: Periods, no space.

• National Review: Periods and a space.

• NBC News (including MSNBC): No periods.

• The New Republic: Periods, no space.

• New York Magazine: Periods, no space.

• New York Times: At one point they used periods and no space, but more recently they’ve been going with no periods.

• The New Yorker: Periods and a space.

• Newsweek: No periods.

• NPR: No periods.

• Politico: No periods.

• Reuters: Periods, no space.

• Slate: Periods, no space.

• Time: Periods, no space.

• USA Today: No periods.

• Vox: Periods, no space.

• Wall Street Journal: Periods, no space.

• Washington Post: Periods, no space.

The final tally breaks down like this:

• No periods: 17 (including the NYT, which handled it multiple ways)

• Periods, no space: 11 (again, including the NYT)

• Periods and a space: 3

Also worth noting: Vance’s page on the U.S. Senate’s official website — which is not a news outlet but still seems relevant to this discussion — shows his name with no periods. That makes sense, given his stated period-free preference.

Leaving aside Vance’s own views, which of these three options is the best from an Inconspicuous Consumption perspective? Let’s start by eliminating the worst option, which is clearly the “periods and a space” style. Why is it the worst? Because the space makes it possible to end up with text like the first sentence of this paragraph:

Screen shot taken from this article in The Atlantic.

I trust we can all agree that that’s unacceptable.

That leaves us with periods and no space, or no periods. Personally, I prefer the periods, because the “J.D.” is short for “James David.” That’s why an initial is called an initial — because it’s the initial letter of a longer name. Without the periods, “JD” reads like its own name that isn’t short for anything.

But wait — it gets better. After I had written most of this piece, it occurred to me that I should check to see how Vance’s name is styled on Wikipedia — and that turned out to be its own little rabbit hole. Check this out:

That screen shot was taken yesterday — Tuesday, July 23 — at around 11am Eastern. At that time, Vance’s Wikipedia article showed his name with periods and a space at the top of the entry (see my “1” annotation). That is apparently Wikipedia’s default style for this type of name, as you can see in their entries for P.T. Barnum, W.C. Fields, A.A. Milne, J.K. Rowling, O.J. Simpson, and many others.

If you look right below Vance’s name, however, you can see that someone had apparently filed a request to remove the space between the letters while keeping the periods (2). Meanwhile, the name above Vance’s photo had no periods (3).

But the thing about Wikipedia is that it’s always changing. When I refreshed that page about 12 hours later, Vance’s name at the top of the entry still had the periods and the space. But the style-change request had been updated — it was now a request to eliminate the periods entirely:

Here’s the Wikipedia page where the name change is being discussed. Looks like they went through much of the same research and thought process that I did — funny! (If I understand that last Wiki page properly, it appears that nothing will be finalized until tomorrow, July 25, at the earliest. If you’re curious, keep an eye on Vance’s page to see how things play out.)

As for me, I’m going to stick with “J.D.,” for the reasons I explained earlier. I know it’s not what Vance prefers, but he’s already changed his mind about this at least once, so who’s to say he won’t do so again?

(Special thanks to Jerry Wolper for editorial assistance.)

Paul Lukas has been obsessing over the inconspicuous for most of his life, and has been writing about those obsessions for more than 30 years. You can contact him here.