This workout finishes our run through the “Glossary of Problematic Words and Phrases” in paragraph 5.254 of CMOS 18. For our usage finale, we’re focusing on words beginning with the letters t as in “that” through w as in “whomever.”
When it comes to punctuation, there’s a difference between formal prose and creative writing.
The Chicago Manual of Style Q&A has been featuring answers to your questions for more than twenty years. During that time our searchable Q&A archive has grown to encompass a huge range of questions about Chicago style.
A few months ago in a conference session, a group of novelists digressed into good-natured complaints about being copyedited. One writer drew a lot of laughs saying, “I mean, I got A’s in English! I know where the freaking commas go!”
If you follow Chicago style, it’s a safe bet you know that a Chicago-style ellipsis consists of three spaced periods. You probably also know . . .
This workout returns to our “Glossary of Problematic Words and Phrases” in paragraph 5.254 of CMOS 18. This time we’re focusing on words beginning with the letters r as in “rack” through s as in “straight.”
If you cite your sources in your thesis or dissertation (or class paper) using the author-date system, you will need to include a reference list. . . .
In novels and stories and other creative works, words spoken by a character are normally set off from the narrative with quotation marks, and the speaker is identified in the run of text by tags like “she said.”
Many of us would benefit from frank conversations with other scholars about improper borrowing, otherwise known as plagiarism, but the topic is so hot that most professors avoid discussing it, except in warnings to their undergraduates.
A comma is normally placed before a coordinating conjunction (and, but, or, so, yet) that joins two independent subject-verb clauses—that is, clauses that could stand on their own as complete sentences. . . .
