New Questions and Answers
from Chicago
Q. We are working on a biography of Pope John Paul II in which the author refers to the subject alternately as Wojtyla and Karol. The question is, should it be made consistent throughout?
A. Yes, but consistent with what? The name should conform to the context. For instance, if the passage is about the pope’s childhood and refers to a brother or sister by first name, the author may have written “Karol” for consistency. In any passage where others are called by first names or surnames for reasons of clarity or convention, the author may have chosen accordingly.
Q. I recently mailed a flyer to my tour group and used the phrase “The Pavilion houses the museum’s collection of Japanese works dating from around 3000 b.c. to the twentieth century,” which I had copied from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art web page. After I clicked the Send button I realized the b.c. was in lowercase. Should I email a correction to the museum staff?
A. A correction—or an apology? I checked out the page you refer to, and on my monitor the abbreviation appears correctly in small caps (B.C.), which can get lost during the transfer of copy from one electronic platform to another (such as copying and e-mailing). If you put quotation marks around the phrase and credited the museum’s site, your only crime was a failure to proofread. If you simply pasted without attribution, that’s plagiarism.
Q. In a bibliography where the title of an unsigned article is a date (“1939: The Beginning of the End”), does the bibliography begin with this entry, or is it alphabetized according to its spelled-out word?
A. It’s usual to file a title like that under the spelled-out version of the number, in this case, nineteen. However, in lists where many such titles begin with numbers, you might rather group them all in numerical order at the beginning. In rare instances you could post an important title at both locations or add a cross-reference directing the reader to the location of the full citation.
Q. I’m preparing the fifth edition of a book. Each edition has had a preface, and all will be included. Should the old prefaces be reproduced verbatim, or should mechanical changes (e.g., a reference to chapter 12 which is now chapter 11) be made?
A. Think about your readers; sending them to the wrong chapters would just be mean. You can update all the references and explain in a footnote at the beginning of the first preface, or you can leave the original references in place and add updates in square brackets [chapter 16 in this volume].
Q. Hello there, I am usually pretty confident about sorting out punctuation, but recently I encountered some information set out as follows.
Title: xxx
Date: xxx
Ref. no.: xxx
I know the colon and the period look silly next to each other, but I guess I just need to know which one to remove and why.
A. I realize we’ve been hammering lately on not having two periods or two punctuation marks in a row, so I don’t blame you for being confused, but the dot in “no.” is not part of the sentence or phrase punctuation; it’s part of the abbreviation. You have to have it. And the colon has its own job to do, so you have to have it as well. A period can do double duty: if an abbreviation ends a sentence, you don’t need two dots. But the period is not flexible enough to convey the meaning of a colon.
Q. Do footnotes have to start with number 1? Can I start my first footnote with number 2? Is that considered wrong?
A. Let me guess: you want to delete note 1 but you didn’t use an automated feature for creating your notes, and you don’t want to renumber notes 2 through 798 by hand. You’ve got a bit of a chore ahead of you unless you can think up a new note 1, because yes, it’s considered wrong to begin with note 2.
Q. I often see initialisms such as EPA and FDA appear without “the.” For example, “One of FDA’s regulations prohibits this.” This comes up particularly often in technical and legal writing and strikes me as pompous. And, yes, these people also speak this way. Please tell me I’m right.
A. But you aren’t right. Local usage and idiom vary; I might say, “I believe the FBI is responsible” but “I believe AIG is responsible,” and you might say the reverse. The writer gets to choose, keeping in mind the document’s readers and any precedent that seems obvious from the research.
Q. Curriculum vitae or vita? According to Merriam-Webster vitae is the plural of vita, but another source indicates that vitae means the “course of one’s life” and vita means “a short biographical sketch.” If these definitions are accurate, it would make sense to use vitae, as the course of one’s life is made up of many singular events or sketches.
A. The two phrases are synonymous. Vita is Latin for “life,” and while it’s true that its plural is vitae, in the phrase curriculum vitae the word vitae is not a plural; it’s the genitive singular, translated “of life.” So curriculum vitae means “course of life” and vita (“life”) is a shorter way to say it.
Q. I read a lot and have been working on a novel of my own for a while now. In most of the materials I read the authors use “had had” and “that that” quite often. For example: “He had had the dog for twelve years and everyone knew that that was the real reason he didn’t want Animal Control to take it.” I doubt there is any actual rule against this, but I find it to be unattractive on a purely aesthetic basis and try to avoid it like the plague when writing. Is there anything to this or am I just weird?
A. As you can see here, correct isn’t always pretty. So you aren’t weird; you’re a writer, and one of the things that makes you a writer is that you’re sensitive to ugliness. Once you’re sensitive to clichés, you’ll be all set.
June Q&A
Q. CMOS says that you’re supposed to capitalize after the colon when the colon introduces (1) a quotation or (2) multiple sentences. But when sentences follow the colon how do you know if they’re sequential enough to warrant the capital? It’s usually really hard to tell.
A. You have to use your judgment. I’m sorry if that’s not very helpful, but rules can’t cover every instance. Don’t waste time overthinking: if it’s that hard to determine, it probably doesn’t matter.
Q. I am working on a book that is more of an information-type book. The author consistently used “it’s,” “I’m,” “I’ve,” “don’t,” “doesn’t,” etc., throughout the entire thing. I went through with the spelling check (I’m using Microsoft Word), and it suggested changing them to “it is,” “I am,” “I have,” etc. I do not think that one should use the abbreviated version. For one, it doesn’t save any space and appears rather unprofessionally written. This will be a published book. Is there a definitive rule on this or is it simply up to the writer/editor on how these words should be used?
A. There’s no rule against contractions in the real world, but your version of Word evidently didn’t get the memo. You can change this in the Tools menu (Options → Spelling and Grammar → Settings → Style) or in Word 2007 via the MS Office Button (Word Options → Proofing → When correcting spelling and grammar → Settings → Style) once you decide on your document’s level of formality. Published content varies in its tone, and therefore in its tolerance of contractions. If your writer naturally uses contractions, wiping them out will change his tone of voice, so you should talk to your editorial supervisor and the author about the preferred tone for this book before letting Word have its way.
Q. I have four different levels of headers. What should be the format (font, bold vs. italic, centered, etc.)? Thanks for your help!
A. The convention is for the copy editor not to style the headings but merely to label them (a, b, etc.) so the designer or typesetter can impose the specified stylings, whatever they are. If you are writing a paper not for publication, however, you might follow the suggestions in Kate Turabian’s Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 7th ed.:
- First level: centered, boldface or italic type, headline-style capitalization
- Second level: centered, regular type, headline-style capitalization
- Third level: flush left, boldface or italic type, headline-style capitalization
- Fourth level: flush left, roman type, sentence-style capitalization
- Fifth level: run in at beginning of paragraph (no blank line after), boldface or italic type, sentence- style capitalization, terminal period
Turabian’s caveat about subheadings is also worth considering: “Unless you are writing a very long and complex paper, think carefully before using more than two or three levels of subheads. Rather than being helpful, they can become distracting. You should have at least two subheads at any level; if you do not, your divisions might not be logically structured” (397–98).
Q. I am editing a military memoir with frequent use of acronyms such as IED (improvised explosive device), DFAC (dining hall), MWR (morale, welfare, and recreation). Should these terms be spelled out throughout the manuscript, or is it appropriate to use the acronym after it has been described in a parenthetical on the first reference?
A. By all means, use the acronyms. The whole point of acronyms is to provide a shorthand form for unwieldy terms after they’ve been introduced. If you find you don’t actually need a particular acronym after defining the term, reconsider whether you need to introduce the acronym in the first place. Conversely, if you think your acronyms will be so familiar to your readers that they don’t need expansion, skip the explanations. Finally, if you’re worried that the number of acronyms will overwhelm the reader, provide a list somewhere.
Q. I am proofing an engineering document. There is a section titled “System Engineering Instruction Team (SEIT).” However, this acronym is already defined in the body of a previous section. The argument is that the section in question should simply be titled “SEIT.” However, I don’t think the section title should be reduced to “SEIT” because the reader may not know what SEIT means upon first glance at the table of contents. I say it’s okay to redefine the acronym if it suddenly becomes the title of a major section. Is it ever okay to redefine an acronym after it has already been defined?
A. Of course it’s okay! What good is a rule that says you can’t help the reader when it seems like a good idea? Redefine an acronym whenever a reader might reasonably have forgotten it.
Q. We’ve been debating this one for quite some time. Should a comma follow a date that begins a sentence? (In 2009, . . .) I feel strongly that this is a proper place to put a comma, but others disagree. Is there a correct or incorrect way to use a comma in this situation?
A. No. You can even do it one way in one paragraph and another way in another paragraph, depending on what you’re eating at the time. It’s unlikely that they would all be the same anyway, because sometimes syntax will dictate a comma for other reasons. (In 1944, about the time of year Pa oiled his coon gun and the beagles started jittering, Deylon Reevy went missing.) It’s less distracting if you do it the same way in instances near each other, though, if syntax allows.
Q. Does one “maximize the total cost of ownership” or “minimize the total cost of ownership”? This phrase is going to be our service’s tagline so we need to get it right.
A. If you make the cost of ownership as high as possible, you maximize it; if you make it as low as possible, you minimize it. Before you decide, you need to be sure which one your service aims to do. And after you decide, if you think it’s possible that others might be confused about what it means, you should probably keep working on that slogan.
Q. The CMOS “rule” is of course that a comma should not be used between the parts of a compound predicate unless necessary for clarification or to indicate a pause, but in editing legal language I find myself intimidated. (I presume the rules are different, and I don’t know them.) I would not myself use a comma, as in the following example, but should I leave it in because it’s legal usage? “Honorary members are not required to pay annual membership dues, but have all of the rights, privileges, and obligations of Regular members.”
A. I’m sorry, but I don’t know legal style, either. My best suggestion is that if you need to edit legal material, you learn the rules. You might start with Bryan A. Garner’s The Elements of Legal Style, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). In the meantime, or if it’s not feasible for you to learn the rules, it’s best simply to query anything you doubt, rather than change it.
Q. Hello, arbiters of messy prose. In a scholarly work on global labor conditions, plural-singular nonagreement involving the word “ability” occurs about fifty times, as in “Rules regarding paid leave affected families’ ability to earn a living.” My instinct is to change “ability” to “abilities” in this and similar cases, but is it really necessary? Thanks!
A. In your sentence, the singular seems right, but sometimes the plural can work if the noun is less abstract and more countable than “abilities”: Rules regarding paid leave affected families’ savings accounts. The plural would also work if “abilities” were used in a slightly more countable, and thus more properly plural, way: Special education can improve students’ abilities in several areas. The singular works best with abstractions that the possessors share in the singular: The new cafeteria menu affected the students’ morale.
Q. Is there a period after an abbreviation of a country if it is terminating a sentence? “I went to U.K..”
A. Seriously, have you ever seen two periods in a row like that in print? If we told you to put two periods, would you do it? Would you set your hair on fire if CMOS said you should?
