I've never owned a q-jet carb before, and I keep seeing different descriptive terms used for the choke: automatic, divorced, and climatic. What's the difference, if any?

Not that I can directly answer your question, but here's a shot:

Automatic - Not manual. In other words, if it doesn't have a cable operated from the passenger compartment (and it has a working choke), it's automatic.

Divorced - An automatic choke with the thermostat "divorced" from the carb. As in, mounted on the intake manifold with a link to the carb. Used early on in the q-jet history.

Hot air - An intergral (mounted on the carb itself) choke thermostat that had a tube running down in the exhaust cross-over passage of the intake manifold that brought warm air up to the thermostat to warm it and open the choke. Used in the 70's on q-jets.

Electric - Same as hot air except voltage used to heat up the choke thermostat element. Started to be used in the late 70's on q-jets.

Also, IIRC, the QJet model tells you what kind of choke it has:

4M: ???

4MV: Divorced choke (I think)

4MC: Integral hot air choke

4ME: Integral electric choke

Not used on Qjets, but on some other carbs were also hot water chokes which were plumbed into the cooling system, or electrically assisted chokes which used both hot air and an electric heating element.