Chicago Style Blog

I'm an editor. I look things up in CMOS16. Then I paraphrase them and make up some examples here.

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6.109 Slashes to show line breaks in quoted poetry

Slashes used to separate lines of poetry have a space on both sides.

I before E / Except after C.

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8.182 Divisions of plays or poems

This one surprised me: per CMOS, parts of plays and poems are referred to with a lowercase "scene," "act," or "stanza," and an arabic numeral.

The Romeo and Juliet (V.ii) of yesteryear is now "act 5, scene 2."

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7.51 Proper nouns and 7.54 Italics for key terms

Per 7.54, key terms in the area under discussion can be italicized on first use (the purl stitch is slightly more difficult; a method is a type of function).

However, per 7.51, foreign proper nouns are not italicized (The Italians call the city Roma; we visited the Moulin Rouge).

What about key terms that are proper nouns (but not foreign)? I've been un-italicizing capitalized technical terms in my work because the capital letters seem to serve the same purpose as the italics—to say that this is a particular significant usage of this name:

You'll need to use Cocoa, the API for Mac OS X. (not "You'll need to use Cocoa ...") 

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14.21 Placement of note number

I always have to check where a superscript note number goes in relation to a comma or colon or period. Answer: Always after the punctuation (unless the punctuation is a dash).

I always have to check where the note number goes;1 Chicago has the answer.2  Only three ingredients are required:3 eggs, milk, and flour.

(P.S. Srsly, Tumblr? Way not to support the <sup> tag.)

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13.48 Ellipses defined

An ellipsis is an omission of words or the mark indicating that omission (…). An ellipse is an oval. Ellipses is the plural of both.

I've recently been seeing "ellipses" where "ellipsis" is meant. Though an ellipsis has three points, it's still just one thing: An ellipsis indicates that the name in the title bar has been truncated.

Chicago gives a technical name for the mark: An ellipsis is the omission of a word, phrase, line, paragraph, or more from a quoted passage. ... [The] points (or dots) are called ellipsis points.

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A.22 Em spaces, en spaces, and so forth

This is my first foray into the "Production and Digital Technology" appendix, woo!

I was proofreading a friend's website and suggested that he add em spaces (which are the width of a capital M) or en spaces (half the size of an em) between certain text elements that seemed too close.

Chicago gives the Unicode numbers for a nice variety of spaces, and we found the HTML entities (  and  ), but we couldn't get them to work. Chicago warns that these spaces are more reliably used in print than online: they are not available in many fonts, limiting their usefulness in electronic documents and publications.

The em space The em space can separate a run-in head from the text.

The en space The en space is a smaller space that can be used similarly.

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8.84 Academic subjects

Just spent some time explaining why I prefer "Anna has a degree in music composition and production" to "Anna has a degree in Music Composition and Production." (That is, what the difference is between talking about an academic subject generically and specifying a particular university program or department).

It seems a lot clearer to me that one is dickish in most contexts when you look at "Matt has a degree in math" versus "Matt has a degree in Math."

Chicago is not as crystal-clear as I like to be when telling someone he's wrong: Academic subjects are not capitalized unless they form part of a department name or an official course name or are themselves proper nouns (e.g., English, Latin).

Could a major be considered "an official course name"? Maybe, but one of the examples (He is majoring in comparative literature) makes my case.

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2.108 Proofreading for spelling errors

I threw a resume away last week for this reason, so I like that CMOS particularly calls out this error:

The proofreader should remain alert for the kind of errors that are typically missed by computerized systems for checking spelling—from common typos ... to more subtle errors like lead for led ...

We find the distinction in one of my favorite sections, Good usage versus common usage (5.220): the past tense of the verb "to lead" is spelled "led," not "lead."

Our company led the industry in declining to hire proofreaders who couldn't spell.

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6.65 Some common misuses of colons

I had to look all over to find backup for my assertion that a colon can introduce a list only if a period would work in its place (in other words, the lead-in to a list introduced by a colon must be a complete grammatical sentence):

A colon, for example, should not be used before a series that serves as the object of a verb. When in doubt, apply this test: to merit a colon, the words that introduce a series or list must themselves constitute a grammatically complete sentence.

So ...

I looked in all these sections for the example:

6.62, Colons with "as follows" and other introductory phrases

6.59, Use of the colon

6.121, Lists and outlines--General principles

(Not "I looked in: 6.62 ...".) 

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5.220 Good usage versus common usage

forego; forgo

To forego is "to come before." Unless you are a lawyer (in the foregoing sections), the only common correct use is probably a foregone conclusion.

To forgo is "to do without." We will forgo further description of the differences between these two words.

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11.53 Italian apostrophes

Omitted letters in Italian are represented by an apostrophe. If the apostrophe follows a vowel, there is a space after it; if the apostrophe follows a consonant, there is no space.

The Ca' d'Oro is a Venetian palace.

(A client advised me to follow Chicago for punctuation in Italian, a language I do not know.)

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9.14 Simple fractions

Simple fractions are hyphenated in noun, adjective, and adverb forms (let's just say "always"). The fraction is left open only in the uncommon case that the individual parts of the quantity are emphasized.

One-sixth of the total solar panel output is available. Add one-third of the flour and one-quarter of the raisins.

but

Jenny built a tower with seven apple quarters. John ate three quarters.

P.S. What's an example of a fraction used as an adverb? She one-quarter finished the reading? 

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7.19 Possessive of nouns plural in form, singular in meaning

The possessive of a "place or an organization or a publication" when plural, even though the entity is singular, is formed by the addition of an apostrophe only.

The New York Times' paywall Adobe Systems' PDF format Farmington Hills' lack of interesting activities for teenagers