Punctuation

Q. I can’t find any reference in CMOS 16 to how odds should be punctuated.

Q. Please help our editorial team settle a debate! Our query concerns this paragraph:

Students might offer many different explanations, such as “Selma has 3 groups of __.” or “John has __. Selma has 3 times as many.”

Is it fine to keep the period at the end of the first example when it is followed by an or and then another example? Thank you.

Q. In this example {The stationery is described in John R. MacArthur’s book The Selling of “Free Trade,” p. 217}, is it right for the quotes that apply only to “Free Trade” to fall after the comma? And if so, should the comma revert to roman but the quotes remain in italics?

Q. If I am making a direct quotation and using the author-date references, the reference is supposed to go within the sentence before the period. But what if the quotation is at the end of the sentence? Do I use two periods? E.g.: Carrington, a Thatcherite conservative, remarked after the Lancaster House agreement in 1979 that “if any man left Lancaster House transformed in the eyes of Western statesmen, it was Mugabe.” (Chan 2003, 14).

Q. A colleague has sent me your about-face from the 15th edition regarding punctuation following italicized words, and I am speechless. I’m afraid I’ll have to look for a new authority on style, because this decision is so vile, and makes text look so absolutely horrible that I refuse to follow the change. What’s next? Putting commas and periods outside quotation marks? You may as well go that route as well; it looks better than having a roman question mark or exclamation point after an italicized word. What’s wrong with you? Why couldn’t you leave well enough alone? Absolutely irrational, horrible decision. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

Q. I know semicolons are mandated for complicated lists. But is a complicated list defined only as a list containing commas within the items in the list?

Q. Hi, I wanted to ask how quotation marks would be used for a timing, for example, John Cage’s 4’3”. Because this features both single and double quotation marks, how would I quote it? Would it be ‘4’33”’ or “4’33””? Thanks in advance.

Q. I have completed my first literary novel. I am working with a well respected editor who has edited many modern novelists. In my writing, I have followed Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style and The Chicago Manual of Style in my use of the semicolon. My editor claims that my uses are “incorrect.” Here is a typical example from my book: “When the spring comes, you tell us we cannot work until we pay our dues; but the problem is, we cannot pay until we work.” The editor’s “correction”: “When the spring comes, you tell us we cannot work until we pay our dues. But the problem is, we cannot pay until we work.” My editor has deleted every semicolon in the manuscript. Can someone explain what is happening to the lowly semicolon and why it gets no respect?

Q. Good day! I am currently revising our stylebook based on The Chicago Manual of Style. I would like to ask if you have a strict standard on slashes, whether I should put a space after the slash before typing/writing the next element, or is it all right if there is none?

Q. Vertical lists punctuated as a sentence! CMOS 6.131 recommends semicolons or commas at the end of list items that complete a sentence. As with run-in lists (6.129), would you recommend putting commas at the ends of items when all items contain no internal commas or other complications to their syntax? Would you use semicolons in every list (punctuated as a sentence) in a document if so much as one list contains one item that has an internal comma?