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?
CMOS: You teach classes on chapbooks/small presses at the University of Chicago. How do you convey to your students what a chapbook is and why it’s important? SA: Chapbooks are incredibly variable and various, so we begin by . . .
CMOS: “When people borrow copyrighted material without permission for casual, nonprofit use, such as in a blog post or lecture or slide show, are they doing something illegal?” Aufderheide: “Not necessarily . . .”
Mary Norris is a copy editor at the New Yorker, where she has worked since 1978. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, she attended Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and earned a master’s in English from the University of Vermont. Her book Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen was published by W. W. Norton on April 6.
Andrew Abbott, the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, edits the American Journal of Sociology. Abbott has twice chaired the University of Chicago’s Library Board and played a central role in planning the university’s Joe and Rika Mansueto Library. His latest book is Digital Paper . . .
Erin McKean is the founder and CEO of Wordnik. Before Wordnik, she was the editor in chief of American dictionaries for Oxford University Press. She has stated that her life goal is “to make sure every word in English has a place in the dictionary.” In her “free” time, she has written half a dozen…
Nathan Fulcher teaches African American literature, English, and English composition at Santa Monica High School in California. He is currently pursuing a master’s in educational technology at California State University–Fullerton.
If you have ever submitted a question to our Chicago Manual of Style Q&A (and we encourage you to do so here), Russell Harper may have been one of the editors considering your question. Russell is especially qualified to answer CMOS questions thanks to his role as the principal reviser for the sixteenth edition. This means . . .
Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist and one of the world’s foremost writers on language, mind, and human nature. He is chair of the Usage Panel of The American Heritage Dictionary and often writes for the New York Times, Time, and the New Republic. After years of research and numerous books on visual cognition and the psychology of language, he has now . . .
A prolific, hard-boiled crime novelist, Donald Westlake wrote nearly one hundred novels, many under the pseudonym Richard Stark. After Westlake died in 2008, Levi Stahl, promotions director at the University of Chicago Press, took on the mission of creating a portrait of the master storyteller. The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany explores Westlake’s craft through his own writing.
