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.”
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.”
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. . . .
In editing formal prose, we fix nonstandard English without hesitation. But in editing creative works, we often need to throw out the stylebook so a narrator or character in a novel or play can abuse grammar to good effect. . . .
It’s time for another editing and proofreading quiz! Once again, we test your knowledge of some of the finer points of Chicago style.
Since it was first published almost twenty years ago, The Copyeditor’s Handbook has served as both textbook and guide for copyeditors in book publishing and corporate communications. The revised fourth edition of the Handbook is now published alongside a companion, The Copyeditor’s Workbook, . . .
Parentheses can be used almost anywhere, but they are rarely seen in fictional dialogue or in quoted speech of any kind. The problem with parentheses in dialogue is that readers may not know exactly how to interpret them. . . .
This workout once again returns to the usage glossary under paragraph 5.254 of CMOS 18. This time we’re focusing on words beginning with the letters n as in “nauseous” through p as in “proven.”
