New Questions and Answers

Q. I’m wondering how to style a webinar series name and the title of an episode in that series. Should the series name be italicized and the episode title be in quotes?

A. CMOS is silent, but your suggestion is one possibility. Or you could make the series title roman like book series titles and titles of academic courses.

Q. When referring to “the corps” as in the Army Corps of Engineers or the Peace Corps, what is the proper possessive form? For example, is it “the corps’ decision” or “the corps’s decision?”

A. Use corps’. Please see CMOS 7.19 for the possessive of nouns that are plural in form, singular in meaning.

Q. In a table, where would you put the row for Miscellaneous or Other if it has numbers large enough that if the rows were ordered by size, it would appear as row 2 or 3?

A. Since other implies “not important enough to identify more explicitly,” that line should go at the bottom of the table. And when a miscellaneous category accounts for so large a part of the data, it should be explained in a note.

Q. These two examples are given in CMOS section 6.77: “My name is Phyllis; that’s p-h-y-l-l-i-s.” “A proficient signer can fingerspell C-O-L-O-R-A-D-O in less than two seconds.” Why are the separated letters caps in one example but lowercase in the other?

A. Because both ways are commonly used, and both work well!

Q. I came across the following footnote in a scientific table: “[A] cohort born ≤ 2010, [B] cohort born ≥ 2011.” Is this an acceptable use of the ≤ and ≥ symbols?

A. Maybe not. You’re safer writing “in or before” and “in or after.”

Q. I have run across this type of construction frequently in a fiction manuscript I’m editing. It feels somehow wrong, but I can’t find any reason why it should be. “Next to the door stood a single guard, an ugly aardvark that was staring at the ground and didn’t see them approach.” A colon instead of the comma would feel better, but is that an unnecessary change? (And colons look rather formal in fictional narratives.)

A. The sentence is fine. (Grammatically, at least.) The comma shows apposition.

Q. Is the verb number correct in the following sentence? (I believe that are should be changed to is, but my French coeditor disagrees.) “A case in point are the representatives associated with the 1977 exhibition in New York.” Many thanks!

A. You’re right: the subject of the sentence, case, is singular. Nonetheless, when one out of two editors thinks a construction is wrong, it’s begging for a rewrite—lest half your readers also think it’s wrong. You can switch subject and complement easily: The representatives . . . are a case in point.

Q. I am wondering why one needs to provide the URL for a journal or newspaper if one consults it online, but not the name of the library, say, if one consults it in print form? Typically everything about the articles is the same, and so the place where one found them should be irrelevant. Indeed, if I understand the logic, if one downloaded the PDF of a book, one would need to provide the URL, but if one made a PDF of a book and then read that, one wouldn’t have to. What am I missing?

A. The problem is that electronic editions of an article aren’t always the same. Writers or editors may tinker with them, adding updates and corrections. In contrast, a specific impression of a printed book or article will be the same as other physical copies of that impression. For now, the best way for a reader to know exactly which version of an electronic document was consulted (and to be able to find it) is to have the DOI or URL.

Q. I am drafting an editorial statement for a journal that adheres to CMOS and I’m not sure how to sign it. What is the proper capitalization of my title, co-Editor-in-Chief? Should it be “Jane Doe, co-Editor-in-Chief” or “Jane Doe, Co-editor-in-chief” or no capitalization at all? Does co- adhere to CMOS, or should our editorial leadership be simply “Editors-in-Chief” (and in that case, how would each editor refer to her individual title)?

A. It’s up to your journal what names to give its leaders, but in the absence of other instructions in CMOS, we follow Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, which spells your terms “editor in chief” and “coeditor.” It’s customary to cap a title in a display line—in this case, Editor in Chief or Coeditor in Chief. (Chicago’s guidelines for lowercasing are meant to apply to running text, not display type.) Please see sections 8.18–19 for general rules on capitalizing titles and offices.

Q. I’m new at this and want to learn all I can. Should there be a comma after Perhaps in the following sentence? “Perhaps I would never have had the opportunity for an education.”

A. A comma has the power to make readers pause, so first try reading the sentence out loud to see whether a pause would be problematic. CMOS 6.36 says that short adverbial introductory phrases are normally fine without a comma, and that seems to be the case in your sentence. Anytime you decide you do want a pause, consider whether you actually need something stronger than a comma, such as a period or dash.

Q. A sentence in a manuscript: In a landmark collection of essays, The Division of the Kingdoms: Shakespeare’s Two Versions of “King Lear,” a range of scholars made the case . . . The book title is of course in italics—but then how does one treat that comma after Lear, and then the quote mark after the comma? Would the comma be in roman, and then the quote mark in italics?

A. This situation is a sticky wicket. The quotation marks must be italic, since they are both part of an italic book title. But the comma doesn’t belong to the title. According to Chicago’s preference for putting punctuation into the same font as the “surrounding text” (6.5), the comma would be roman. But this comma is “surrounded” by italics! If only we could use “logical punctuation,” whereby the comma would go outside the quotation marks, to render the issue moot. But that would be un-American. Editors here disagree on the best solution, so style the comma as you wish with the hope that its tiny size will allow readers to ignore it.

Q. I am writing a fictional piece that includes a discussion of the Fujita scale of tornado intensities. I am trying to write “318 miles an hour, the top wind speed of an F5 tornado.” I know the Manual wants most numbers spelled out up through 999, but writing “three-hundred-eighteen miles an hour” just doesn’t look right.

A. Actually, the Manual spells out nonround numbers only through one hundred, so “318 miles an hour” is fine Chicago style. Please see sections 9.2–7 for the general rules on spelling out numbers.

Q. This question/answer appeared in the November Q&A:

Q. Which is the proper spelling of a generic age: 30s and 40s or 30’s and 40’s?

A. Chicago’s preferred style is thirties and forties, but if you need to use numerals, we recommend leaving out the apostrophes.

The answer states “we recommend leaving out the apostrophes.” Recommend means to advise, appearing to state that there is a choice, yet in the question, surely the apostrophes are incorrect according to the rule of grammar? Thank you, and by the way, what has happened to the fun quips that used to appear in the Q&A answers?

A. The apostrophes aren’t actually incorrect; they’re commonly used. Oxford Dictionaries specifically allows apostrophes for the plurals of single numerals (e.g., 7’s). But they aren’t Chicago style, and we recommend omitting them in the plurals of numbers written as numerals. As for the fun quips, we are professionals here; we can’t just sit around quipping all the time. (But if you’re desperate, you can find a few here.)

Q. Do I cite the transcript of a radio broadcast differently from the radio broadcast? I read the transcript and did not access the broadcast itself.

A. Yes—it’s important to cite the transcript if that’s where you got your information. Please see CMOS 14.277 (“Recordings of literature, lectures, and such”) for an example.

Q. I’m confused why there is a comma before “as well as” in 6.18, “The team fielded one Mazda, two Corvettes, and three Bugattis, as well as a battered Plymouth Belvedere.” If “as well as” was replaced with “and,” there would not be a comma. I can’t find anything else about this in the Manual. Can you please explain?

A. The comma tells us to read the Belvedere as an afterthought—it hints that the battered car is in a different league from the other cars. A search of the Manual for the phrase “as well as” reveals that it is sometimes introduced by a comma and sometimes not, depending on context and meaning.

Q. I edit short summaries for nonfiction books. As you know, for informal writing, the bending of grammatical and stylistic rules is tolerated. I’m establishing a style guide to produce all my summaries in consistent style. I would love to know how CMOS might help me, or if you have any other resource that book editors may resort to.

A. If you are a subscriber to CMOS Online, you can use our Style Sheet feature to keep track of rules you decide to bend. You can make as many style sheets as you like. Style sheets can be copied, downloaded, and e-mailed to other people. Within a style sheet, you can use a button to insert a hot-linked reference to any numbered section of the Manual.

The Notes feature would also come in handy, since it allows you to annotate any section of CMOS to include your own styles and rules. 

As for guidance on editing informal writing, the decisions you make will be specific to each author’s intention and tone and audience. It’s more a matter of editorial judgment than something you can follow rules for. But the guidelines in CMOS covering punctuation, hyphenation, capitalization, and myriad other topics should still be very useful.

Q. I have a question about copyright notices in image credit lines. Section 3.31 says that credit lines “occasionally” require a copyright date, but I’m not sure when they do and when they don’t. The first example doesn’t have a copyright date, while the second example, which is formatted identically in other respects, does. Is this determined by the permission grantor, or are there other factors involved?

A. It is indeed determined by the permission grantor, who may specify that the copyright date be included in the credit line. For advice on a specific situation that isn’t clear, please consult an attorney who specializes in intellectual property law.

Q. If a portion of a book is quoted in text and the author and the name of the book are given in the text (e.g., “Sensory perception is a matter of selectively throwing away information,” write Terry Bossomaier and David Green in their book Patterns in the Sand), is there a need for an endnote, as well?

A. You do need a complete citation when you quote someone else’s work in text. It needn’t be in the form of an endnote, but an endnote (or footnote) is an excellent way to add the publication information (city, publisher, date) and page or location number of the quotation if you can’t squeeze it all into the text.

Q. Which is the proper spelling of a generic age: 30s and 40s or 30’s and 40’s?

A. Chicago’s preferred style is thirties and forties, but if you need to use numerals, we recommend leaving out the apostrophes.

Q. Is there any acceptable way for an author to distinguish between endnotes that convey additional information and those that simply provide a reference citation? I get very tired of chasing down a dozen who-cares citations to occasionally glean a gem of real information.

A. It’s fairly common for writers of scholarly books to use footnotes for discursive material and endnotes for citations. But to flag two different types of endnotes somehow in the text? That seems potentially fussy and confusing.

Q. “The question is: how would you ask Mr. Jones what concerns he has about placing his order today?” Is the question mark correct?

A. Yes, but the construction is ambiguous and could be improved by editing the sentence into a statement—an indirect question—which would end with a period: “The question is how you would ask Mr. Jones what concerns he has about placing his order today.”

Q. The 16th edition 13.7, point 4, states that it’s permissible to omit note reference marks from a quotation “unless omission would affect the meaning of the quotation.” Does the same principle apply to author-date citations within quotations? I.e., can author-date citations within a quotation be omitted without introducing an ellipse?

A. Author-date citations should be retained, or (as you suggest) their omission should be indicated with an ellipsis. If this would result in a manuscript full of ellipses, and if the citations are not needed, an alternative is to omit the references and explain your method in a general note.

Q. Why is University of Chicago Readings in Western Civilization italicized in the “Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide,” when series are not italicized?

A. That example is treating the title as the title of a multivolume work rather than as a series. Sometimes the nature of such a work is ambiguous and the writer must decide which form to use. Please see CMOS 14.122–23.

Q. I am a little confused about how to properly use an em dash in the case of independent clauses. I thought that it should not be used to join two independent clauses, but I see it used this way all the time, and there is nothing definitive about its use in this instance in your book. Here’s an example: This plan isn’t like other diets—in fact, it’s not a diet at all. Please help me settle this issue once and for all!

A. There is no rule against joining two independent clauses with an em dash, as the examples at 6.82–87 illustrate. The em dash may be used in almost any syntax where a break is needed.

Q. In an essay, an author cited a report by an organization that has, since that report, changed its name, and later the author cited a second report written and published by the organization under its new name. Should the entries in References be under two different names, or both under the new name, perhaps with the first including a note such as, “Formerly . . .”?

A. The author should cite each report under the name that appears on the report. Annotating the new name with “Formerly . . .” is a good idea. Add blind entries in the reference list, if necessary:

New Name. See also Old Name
Old Name. See also New Name

Q. Chicago is very clear on the styling of editor- or author-translated titles in notes, but the examples provided are all books with italicized titles. In the case of a paper where the foreign title is enclosed in double quotes, is the bracketed translation placed before or after the closing quotes?

A. A translation would be placed within the quotation marks only if it were actually part of the title. You can find examples of bracketed translations of titles in quotation marks at CMOS 14.194 (“Translated article titles”).

Q. Hello. I’m organizing a bibliography with multiple sources from the same author, including several introductions she’s written. Would all the introductions be alphabetized under I for Introduction?

A. Yes, and then all the introductions should be sorted into alphabetical order by book or article title. See CMOS 14.116 for how to style a bibliography entry for a book introduction.

Q. Hello, Chicago. I’m having a heck of a time with this one. Yes, I’m probably overanalyzing it, but . . . Chicago says to lowercase hell and heaven except in a purely religious context. I’m editing a romantic novel where the author makes several references to hell. I’m second-guessing myself on when to cap it. In an expression like “no way in hell,” I’d lowercase it. But in the next sentence, the heroine thinks she’s going to Hell. And what about words like hell-bound? Thanks.

A. By “purely religious context,” CMOS means “in a religious publication,” since readers of such publications may be offended by lowercasing. I’m guessing that this novel is not a religious publication. Lowercasing throughout should be fine.