Julian Glover, CBE

This was my first interview with an individual appointed CBE (or any similar honor).

CBE, for those unfamiliar who haven't Googled it yet, stands for Commander of the Order of the British Empire. It's an honor presented by The Royal Family, and, as mentioned in the interview, it's one step below knighthood.

Back on KTRM, I was in talks to interview Sir David Frost, which were going quite well, but, sadly, he passed before it could come to fruition.

As my first interview with someone appointed CBE, it's also my first time writing about an individual appointed CBE.

Being a step-below knighthood, an individual appointed CBE isn't entitled to use the title "Sir", but they are, of course, entitled to use the post-nominal "CBE". In the US, post-nominals are generally academic in nature: things like "PhD" or "MD" or some other indicator of a post-graduate degree are the most common. And, in the US, when referring in writing to such an individual, it's considered proper to put a comma between the person's name and the post-nominal.

But "CBE" and the like aren't post-nominals in the US, so American styles of writing shouldn't apply to them. (It feels weird to me to even refer to it as an "honor", rather than an "honour". It reminds me a bit of what JK Rowling said about Scholastic, her US publisher, changing all the instances of "mum" in Harry Potter to "mom" — that was a mistake they only made once. Anyway...) Not knowing how such post-nominals were styled in the UK, I did a quick Google search to find out.

The results were a mixed bag. Most seemed to indicate that there is no comma, but there were a handful of seemingly authoritative sources that seemed to indicate that a comma was proper in this situation.

Slightly more confused than I was when I started, I went to a site that I've used extensively in the past for forms of address and reference etiquette. But, being a US-based site, the closest it came to this subject was about the proper use of the title "Sir".

So, I got the idea to ask the Royal Family's Press Office, because they'd know. But, for whatever reason, they're only reachable by phone or physical letter, and I wasn't about to pay the international calling charges to get an answer to that question, nor was I inclined to wait for them to receive (and hopefully answer) a letter.

From there, I decided to seek out style guides. Most that came up were American and didn't go beyond the "Sir" thing and what I already knew about academic post-nominals. Then I found a style-guide for the University of Oxford. The introduction said that it's not intended for use by the general public, but, rather, consistency within the administration & community, but I figured that they wouldn't contradict proper norms, and, being an elite British university, they'd know.

Their style guide alluded to a comma being proper, but it didn't say it outright, so I fired off a quick email to the listed contact email to confirm. I got a reply back surprisingly quickly considering the current situation, which confirmed that they deem the comma proper, and pointing me toward the relevant portion of the Chicago Manual of Style that concurs.

If it's good enough for Oxford University and the Chicago Manual of Style, it's good enough for me. And that's an insanely long, mostly pointless, story about why this is entitled "Julian Glover, CBE" and not "Julian Glover CBE".