Even writers and editors who work with nontechnical documents will encounter the occasional abbreviated unit of measure or other abbreviation from the sciences. Knowing some basic conventions about such expressions will help you spot potential errors.
CMOS: When it comes to word processing, CMOS users probably represent every level of expertise (or nonexpertise), but regardless of skill level, we all experience frustration at times when we don’t know how to accomplish a task on our computers. Often we do something the way we’ve always done it—the slow way—because it just seems too difficult or scary to try to automate it. Is there a cure?
Peter J. Olson is an English major in a science world. As senior copyediting coordinator for Dartmouth Journal Services, he manages copyediting services for a variety of science and medical journals and has learned to navigate a sea of styles and style guides. In this month’s Shop Talk, he shares his tips on creating a…
Plant scientists, zoologists, microbiologists, and many other scientists often deal in special characters and precise formats beyond even the scope of the thousand-page Chicago Manual of Style. That’s where Scientific Style and Format comes in. Overseen by the Council of Science editors, it offers sections such as “Stereochemical Nomenclature,” “Plant-Pathogenic Fungi,” and “Dwarf Planets and Small Solar System Bodies (Asteroids and Comets).” We talked to Lindsey Buscher, the project manager for
Academic journals are some of the first places that groundbreaking scholarship makes its debut. Speed and accuracy are both important, and so manuscript editors working with journals must be able to deftly maneuver among different styles and strict deadlines. Mary Nell Hoover, a senior manuscript editor, talks about her job in the Journals Editorial Science…
Clear, strong writing is a goal that tops many writers’ and editors’ lists. But when the words must convey important information to an audience, such as the results of new research or the terms of a credit card agreement, unclear writing can be a serious problem.
For many authors of academic papers, the specific rules of Chicago style may be some of the only straightforward guidance they get during a perplexing publishing process. Papers seem to disappear into a submission system only to mysteriously reappear with a decision. What is it that journal editors are really looking for?
