Sections 14.73–74 in the Spotlight
Although it seems simple enough to include the author’s name as the first element of a citation, CMOS users have questions about how to do it. Here are a few pointers from paragraphs 14.73–74 of the Manual.
I Know It’s There—But I Can’t Find It!
We know The Chicago Manual of Style is big. The new 17th edition weighs in at over three pounds and is 1,146 pages long. Something we hear in emails to our Q&A is “I know it’s in there, but I can’t find it!” So here’s a valuable searching tip:
How Not to Look at Illustrations in The Chicago Manual of Style
As a reader of the email that comes to The Chicago Manual of Style, I regularly find myself explaining the purpose of the illustrations (figures and tables) to puzzled users. Two recent queries:
Section 2.12 in the Spotlight
In a typed document, each new paragraph should begin with a first-line indent, applied either with the Tab key or with your word processor’s indentation feature rather than the Space bar. One-half inch is the traditional measure for an indent. Exceptions:
Sentence Adverbs
The 17th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style will arrive any day now! We’ve been looking at some of the changes and new material in the new edition. This week, we take a look at sentence adverbs.
Countdown to CMOS 17
CMOS 17 is almost here—and at the University of Chicago Press, that’s a really big deal. Every seven to ten years the team here revs up for an overhaul of The Chicago Manual of Style, and two to three years after that,
Sections 8.167−68 in the Spotlight
Readers are sometimes puzzled by Chicago’s recommendations of when to lowercase or drop an initial the from the title of a work in running text. Sections 8.167 and 8.168 of CMOS (16th edition) lay out the rules. For a bonus, we’ll also cover the use of the in titles of websites (8.186) in running text. Chicago guidelines for the use of the
Chicago Style Workout 16:
Word Usage, Part 3
This month’s workout, “Word Usage, Part 3,” again centers on the usage list under paragraph 5.250 of CMOS 17. Writing and editing are more efficient when you never have to look up gauntlet or dither over farther versus further.
Chicago Style Workout 14: Editing Tables
This month’s workout centers on paragraphs 3.81–88 of CMOS 17, “Editing Tables.” Advanced editors might tackle the questions cold; learners can study he relevant section in CMOS before answering the questions.
Section 8.1 in the Spotlight
It’s not always obvious whether a word should be capitalized. We know to cap proper names of people, holidays, cities, and countries. But what about words like dad, state, or president? Confusion arises when the same word is capped in one context and lowercased in another:
