If your company produces any kind of writing, there’s a good chance you can benefit from using a style guide—even if you’re not in a field immediately associated with publishing. The best practice for any company is for everyone to use the same guide for spelling, punctuation, and a multitude of other style matters.
When we saw the beautiful graphics recently in the Washington Post that Princeton neuroscientist Adam J. Calhoun created from famous works, we couldn’t help but wonder how The Chicago Manual of Style would hold up under the same scrutiny.
This workout centers on paragraphs 6.33–35 and 6.36–38 (with a brief look at 6.57) in CMOS 18. Advanced editors might tackle the exercises cold; learners can study the related sections of the Manual before answering the questions.
Q.Have you seen big changes in what young people want to read over the course of your career as a bookseller turned librarian?
CMOS receives regular queries from readers asking whether greetings like “Hi, Elsa” really need that comma. Especially in e-mail messages, we hear, it looks fussy. And it takes so long to type!
This workout is the first in a series of dozens of workouts at Shop Talk, each of which has now been updated to refer and link to the 18th edition of CMOS. Whether you’re a beginner or an old pro, these interactive quizzes should help you build and maintain your editorial muscles.
Anyone who has something to sell faces a dilemma when it comes to deciding on a price: ask too much and no one will buy; ask too little and you won’t earn enough money. In freelance editing, the second option carries an added danger: ask too little and you could be swamped with competing deadlines.
Would you play Scrabble against this man? Peter Sokolowski is editor at large at Merriam-Webster, where he works on the Word of the Day podcast, Ask the Editor videos, articles about word trends and etymologies—and serves as pronouncer for spelling bees around the world. Editor Carol Saller asks him about Merriam-Webster’s billion lookups each year.
What do you resolve for 2016? Comments are open—feel free to share!
CMOS: You have now translated a large portion of the Hebrew Bible into English. What motivated you to take on such an enormous, high-profile, high-stakes project?
