What’s New in the CMOS 17 Citation Chapters

The announcement of a new edition of The Chicago Manual of Style always prompts rejoicing—along with a few worried queries about how much the citation styles are changing. Never fear! The forthcoming 17th edition of CMOS entails few changes to our notes, bibliography, and reference list citation styles. After all, we’ve had over a hundred years to work on getting them right. Instead, the updates and revisions

Chicago Style for the Singular They

Since the announcement that the 17th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style will arrive in September, there has been a lot of buzz about some of the announced changes to the Manual. We’ll be looking closer at some of the changes over the coming weeks. First up is the pronoun they when it refers to a singular antecedent.

But Is It Wrong?

One of the primal joys in life is to do good work. When the suit fits, the accounts balance, or the pie crust is flakey, someone takes pride in it.

In editing, it feels good to make corrections, tidy things up, and serve the reader. It feels good to put knowledge into practice. And—admit it—it feels good to spot an error! . . . Problems arise when

3* Rookie Editing Goofs You Can Stop Making Right Now

Some lessons are harder to learn than others. Unfortunately for new copyeditors, sometimes the only way to recognize bad habits is to get slammed a few times by writers pushing back or by supervisors writing stet all over the copy. So let me save you some grief and humiliation! Here are three bad habits I identified the hard way as a young editor.