To celebrate the end of another decade, we’ve put together eleven questions designed to test your knowledge of some random editorial facts.

Each question is inspired by something mentioned somewhere in the 17th edition of CMOS. But don’t worry: you don’t have to know anything about the Manual to take the quiz. And even if you know nothing about editing or grammar or anything else, you might have some fun guessing which answers are fake. (The correct answers will be explained when you click “Submit.”)

Happy holidays from your friends at The Chicago Manual of Style!

See you in 2020!

What Does an Editor Know?

1. The em dash derives its name from

Emily Dickinson

the letter em

the verb “emdash” (literally, “to insert a dash, as between words”)

2. When an editor circles a numeral on a manuscript, it means

check the number for accuracy

set circled numerals, like ①②③

spell the number out

3. TK is an abbreviation for

“to come”

in boxing, a technical knockout

Topeka, Kansas

4. The French word “émail” refers to

electronic mail

the corporate correspondence of luxury conglomerate LVMH

enamel or varnish

5. The “s” in “https” at the beginning of a URL indicates

shopping

the plural form of “http” (allowing for multiple links)

secure

6. The term “x-height” is

the preferred way to write “excite” in text messages

the height of a lowercase letter without ascenders or descenders

the distance above the horizontal axis in a graph or a chart

7. An ergative verb is a verb that

states a conclusion (from Latin “ergo”)

can be either transitive or intransitive

has the same form in the past tense as in the present tense

8. A wavy line drawn by hand under a word is an instruction that means

make the word bold

set in Comic Sans

check the spelling

9. A stub is

the left-hand column of a table arranged into columns and rows

a pencil that’s been sharpened down to less than seven centimeters but more than two

the first draft of a manuscript

10. The name assigned by Unicode to the hyphen (-) is

hyphen

tiny dash

hyphen minus

11. Bonus question: William Strunk Jr., the original author of The Elements of Style, also worked as a literary consultant on which 1930s Hollywood film?

Duck Soup

The Wizard of Oz

Romeo and Juliet

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Top image: Microsoft’s Segoe UI Emoji font rendering of Thinking Face and Electric Light Bulb.

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