New Questions and Answers
from Chicago
at http://www.subversivecopye
ditor.com/blog/.
Q. When abbreviations are used only in appendix A of a book, and the list of abbreviations is placed before the appendixes, how is it designated in the table of contents? Is it designated Appendix A so that the other appendixes become B and C?
A. There are various ways to handle this. A short abbreviations list could be incorporated into appendix A under a subhead “Abbreviations” and not be listed in the contents at all. A longer list could appear as its own back-matter section called “Abbreviations” just before the appendixes. (It would not itself be an appendix to the main text.) In this case, the contents page would list Abbreviations, then Appendix A (with title), then Appendix B (with title). Alternatively, you could condense the contents listing to Abbreviations, then Appendixes.
Q. I’m editing an e-newsletter in which the e-mailed page includes the first few lines of each article, ending with a link that says “Read the full article.” In some (not all) cases, the first few lines of the articles end in the middle of sentences. The designer has inserted ellipses in these cases. (Example: Congress passed legislation that . . . Read the full article.) No words are omitted—but I can’t think of anything better than ellipses. What do you say?
A. Ellipses are a good idea here; they are commonly used to indicate a sentence purposely left incomplete. Please see CMOS 13.53. In any case, if the shortened teasers are produced by software that inserts the dots automatically after a set number of characters, objecting to them might be pointless.
Q. I know that ship and vessel names are italicized, but what is your criterion for determining what is a ship or vessel? I thought the idea was that the thing could carry people, but I must be wrong, because you set the Phoenix Mars lander in italics in your example. Are artificial satellites such as Sputnik set in italics? How about things like the International Space Station or the James Webb Telescope?
A. For every guideline in CMOS, at some point we have to stop narrowing our criteria and examples and just trust readers to use their own best judgment and record their decisions in their style sheets. Depending on the context, you might want to style gray-area terms consistently with other terms that you confidently styled per CMOS.
Q. In a reference list I’m editing, page ranges don’t seem to be provided for chapters in edited volumes. Should I query the author for page numbers?
A. Ideally, the page ranges would be included, but it’s up to you whether to ask for them, require them, or merely point out where they’re missing. Consider how many ranges are missing, how much else there is for the author to tend to, and how much you think the author would care about this if it were pointed out. (You can sometimes guess this from the general level of meticulousness in a manuscript.) You don’t want to peck an author to death, and it’s not a disaster for readers to be without this information, so you might decide to let the matter go.
Q. In a book manuscript, the levels of the subheads look a little confusing. For instance, in chapter 1, all the subheads appear to be H1, and then under an H1, there is a run-in head, which would be H3, but there’s no intervening H2. In chapter 2, there’s an H1 (bold, roman type), then what appears to be an H2 (italic type), and then two stacked heads (H2 and H3? but the H3 is not run in). Should I just query and then fix the coding at cleanup?
A. Yes. Remember too that it sometimes makes sense to skip a level, if the author wants similar content to reflect the same level of importance or organization in all the chapters. In your cover letter, ask the writer to confirm that her heads reflect the hierarchy she intended and that you have coded them correctly.
Q. I have a question about in-text citations. In my reference list I have website sources that do not have a date of creation or a last modified date. How would I cite these references in the text? Would I use n.d. or the access date following the author in the parentheses?
A. Yes, n.d. stands in for a date that can’t be determined. The date of access may be relegated to the reference list, unless it’s relevant to the discussion in the text.
Q. The CMOS rules (8.21) point to “secretary of state” but “Secretary of State Clinton” or “Secretary Clinton,” so I am using “president” but “President Kirchner.” But shouldn’t I capitalize “the Pinochet Dictatorship”? and what about “the Kirchner Administration” and “the Kirchner Government”? Rather than “generic terms associated with governmental bodies” (8.64), they all form an important part of recent Latin American history, like the Mexican Revolution. In addition, they “follow a name and are used as an accepted part of the name” (8.50).
A. While administration and government are commonly capped in sources that don’t follow CMOS, to my eye “the Pinochet Dictatorship” (capped) looks bizarre. Can you imagine it stamped at the top of letterhead stationery or etched in gold leaf on a door? If so, then go ahead and cap it (even though Chicago wouldn’t).
Q. If our publication follows your style of italicizing the titles of most works (e.g., books), what would you recommend we do in cases when that title must appear in the headline of an article? Italicization is not possible in our headline fields, and our style for quotation marks in headlines is single quotation marks. Single quotes would likely improve clarity in many cases, but it may also be best to use quotation marks only when needed for clarity. I would appreciate some reinforcement as we try to pin this down for good.
A. Since you are more or less limiting your choices for styling titles in headlines to (1) using single quotation marks, (2) not using quotation marks, and (3) using them inconsistently, I vote for number 1.
Q. Hi—I’m editing a MS where the author has included the page reference for a quotation as follows:
. . . a performative intervention that would “challenge the conceptual categories that frame” such historical encounters (Merrill 2006, 65).
Is the citation placement correct? In APA the citation immediately follows the quotation, e.g.,
. . . that frame” (Merrill 2006, p. 65) such historical encounters.
But as the author has adopted this generally as a style, I’m thinking it might be right according to Chicago (with which I am less familiar). Can you help, please?
A. CMOS does not dictate a single approach to placing citations, but if you move a citation, you must be careful not to change the nature of the attribution. Presumably your writer wants to attribute the entire thought to Merrill 2006, but APA style obscures that point (in addition to separating the verb from the direct object). If you move citations in this MS, be prepared to explain why, and ask the author to check that you haven’t introduced any problems.
Q. When I’m writing a press release with different bird species, should they all be capitalized or only the specifically named bird? Example: The common birds include rufous hummingbirds, Steller’s Jays, ravens, varied thrush, mountain bluebirds, red crossbill, ruffed grouse, spotted and barred owls, and many more.
Q. Blonde, or blond? I was taught that the adjective is always blond —a blond woman. And blonde (noun) describes a woman who is blond—the pretty blonde lounged by the pool. But can blonde also be used as an adjective? Her hair was blonde?
Q. “Smart phone” or “smartphone”?
A. Many, many “how do you spell X?” queries come to the Q&A. Such questions are of the lowest priority for replies, because we know that anyone who can reach our Q&A has access to a computer, and therefore access to online dictionaries and search engines. Except for those extremely few of you whose moms we are, we are not your mom. And if we were, we would say, “Sorry, chickie—look up your own words.”
January Q&A
Q. Chicago recommends using the present tense when discussing the actions of characters in literature. But I often face questions about verb tense when discussing the actions of authors themselves, particularly in academic writing. Is it correct to say, “Blomley (2004) argues that property claims can be used toward ends that are both oppressive and emancipatory,” or should I instead render the verb in the past tense? Would the answer change if Blomley had written his book in, say, 1867?
A. Regardless of how long ago the author wrote, the “historic present” is commonly used in just this type of context. If you want to emphasize the past, however—perhaps to contrast it with the present—the past tense works well. Absolute consistency needn’t be a goal in a long manuscript, but don’t mix tenses near each other. Please see CMOS 5.123.
Q. I have a photograph that I want to describe. It is a picture of two couples who are business friends. Would I write, “This is a photograph of the Gould’s and the Johnson’s” or “This is a photograph of the Goulds and the Johnsons”?
A. Our readers never tire of asking this question. What you need is a simple plural: one cat, two cats; one Gould, two Goulds. This is a photograph of the cats. This is a photograph of the Goulds.
Q. At one time, the location of a publisher could be used to get a phone number via directory assistance. This is no longer how anyone would do it, and publishers have frequently moved, been acquired, and so forth, so the location is often highly ambiguous. Authors spend tens of thousands of hours annually looking up or making up publisher locations. I’m staring now at a copy editor’s request that I identify the location of Cambridge University Press—and the editor says it is because you insist on it. Can you give me any sane reason for this collective expenditure of effort and print in 2012? It would make me feel better, as it feels like an empty ritual of no contemporary value, engaged in by a field that is unaware of the digital era. Insistence on archaic rules brings to mind the replicant lament in Blade Runner, “Then we’re stupid and we’ll die.”
A. We are so misunderstood! CMOS is not in the business of insisting on this or that. From our very first edition in 1906 we have stated very clearly that “rules and regulations such as these, in the nature of the case, cannot be endowed with the fixity of rock-ribbed law. They are meant for the average case, and must be applied with a certain degree of elasticity.” As for place of publication, in scholarly research it can be useful in tracking the development of the literature within a discipline (especially in instances where publishers are old and obscure). In fact, it’s not unusual for an academic to write a bibliography that includes only the place of publication for each work cited, without the publisher. When that happens, the editor or publisher must decide whether to require more information.
Q. What is the correct way to report ages of people? In what cases, if any, would it be acceptable to use numerals? Our company’s style guide follows CMOS, but suggests using figures in reporting ages. I appreciate your guidance.
A. It’s usual to use numerals in lists, in tables, and in any context where an abundance of numbers makes spelling them out awkward.
Q. I am editing an article, and the terms “Cause of Death,” “Manner of Death,” “Natural,” “Accident,” “Suicide,” “Homicide,” and “Undetermined” are all capitalized. If the term is reused later in the article, e.g., “This is a Natural death” and “There has been no finding as to the Manner and possible Cause of death,” should I capitalize “Natural,” “Manner,” and “Cause” in this latter usage?
A. This type of capping is antiquated and unfortunate. As common nouns and adjectives, the terms should be lowercased. They may be italicized on first mention, but afterward they should appear as regular words—no italics or quotation marks or caps.
Q. How do I acknowledge that a quotation is a translation made by myself? (I’m writing in Dutch; all sources are in English.)
A. You can write, “(my translation).”
Q. Our group has chosen The Chicago Manual of Style as a reference for our university translation project (textbook on international trade). What I’d like to know is whether, since we have chosen CMoS, it now supersedes the capitalization rules used by the publishing agencies of works cited in the text. For example, would it be “Customs—Trade Partnership Against Terrorism” as it appears on their website or “Customs—Trade Partnership against Terrorism,” following CMoS rules for lowercasing prepositions?
A. The latter. Choosing a style guide means that you will edit your documents to conform to that guide. It’s actually one of the primary purposes of having a guide. Titles in original published works feature various display styles—all caps, small caps, italics. There’s really no way a writer or editor can be expected to research and reproduce the exact appearance of the title page of every book. Since you’ve decided to follow CMOS (yay!), you will lowercase “against” per CMOS 8.157.
Q. I teach an English-writing class, where I tell my Japanese students never to mix singular and plural pronouns and verbs (“the government has released its”; “the couple have had their”). I am also a Japanese-to-English translator and have turned in quite a few passages like this, albeit with a sense of guilt: “Company A offers our heartfelt sympathy to the tsunami victims.” What do you suggest in situations where “the company offer” and “its heartfelt sympathy” both sound odd?
A. The remedy (aside from the guilt thing) is to rewrite the sentence until it doesn’t sound odd. For instance, you could write, “We at Company A offer our heartfelt sympathy.” There is almost always a way to rethink (even the guilt thing).
Q. How are recipe titles treated within text? Do they use uppercase? Quotation marks?
A. Names of recipes fall somewhere between common and proper names, neither of which deserves quotation marks. Although it’s usual to see a headline-capped title at the top of a recipe, in the text caps are not obligatory, especially if the use is generic: my sister’s recipe for pecan pie, as opposed to my aunt’s recipe for Peppy Pecan Pie.
Q. According to 8.84 of the 15th edition of CMOS , the names of major sporting events are capitalized. But none of the examples provided include major sporting events made up of multiple games. For the World Series, for example, would it be Game Four of the 1948 World Series, or game four of the 1948 World Series?
A. Either way is fine, but Chicago style prefers to lowercase when there’s a choice, and we also like to use numerals for enumerations, so we would probably refer to game 4 of the World Series, in the way that we refer to chapter 1 of a book.
Q. How do you recover from a real proofreading blooper—the kind that has everyone in gales and is terribly embarrassing?
A. Naturally, we have very little experience with this. Is there absolutely no way to blame it on someone else? If not, you probably should keep a low profile until it blows over. Lucky for you, proofreaders automatically have a fairly low profile.