Chicago Style Workout 14: Editing Tables

/ April 25, 2017

Drawing of track and field athlete Ray C. Ewry

On your toes!

This workout centers on paragraphs 3.82–89 of CMOS 18. Advanced editors might tackle the questions cold; learners can study he relevant section in CMOS before answering the questions.

(Subscribers to The Chicago Manual of Style Online may click through to the linked sections of the Manual. We also offer a 30-day free trial of CMOS Online.)

Note: These questions are designed to test your knowledge of The Chicago Manual of Style. Other style guides may have different rules and guidelines.

Now updated to refer and link to the 18th edition.

Chicago Style Workout 14: Editing Tables

1. Tables should be edited for style—with special attention to matters of capitalization, spelling, punctuation, abbreviations, numbers, and use of symbols.
2. Although the terms percent and percentage are interchangeable, one form should be used throughout a table.
3. Number ranges in successive table columns normally overlap by one number: for example, “$1–$5, $5–$10, $10–$15, $15–$20.”
4. In a column consisting exclusively of, for example, dollar amounts or percentages, the signs should be omitted from the cells and included in the column head or, occasionally, in the stub entry (i.e., in the first column).
5. In statistical tables the total number of a group from which data are drawn may be represented by an italic capital N or a lowercase n.
6. One remedy for a long, skinny table is to double it up, running the table in two halves, side by side, with the column heads repeated over the second half.
7. To present a table broadside (as in a printed work), rotate it ninety degrees counterclockwise so it reads left to right from the bottom to the top of a page.
8. In printed works, decimal numbers in tables should align by decimal point.
9. For a vertical table of more than one page, the column heads are repeated on each page.
10. For a two-page broadside table presented on facing pages, column heads need not be repeated.

 

Photo: Ray C. Ewry, George Arents Collection, New York Public Library Digital Collections.

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