Q. How would I format an endnote citing a table published in an online census report? Is it necessary to include the table title,
and would all of this go after the access date, or after the title and before the website?
A. Table titles are often piled with information, so consider including them if you have room (e.g., U.S. Census Bureau, “All
Persons, by Sex, Race, Hispanic Origin, and Health Insurance Coverage: Calendar Year 1993,” Health Insurance
Historical Tables, 1992 to 1993, table 1, accessed March 6, 2010, http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/hlthins/hlth9293/hi93t1.html).
If you’re citing a table from a book, you can put the table number and title at the end of the citation
followed by the page number.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Are there any conventions yet for citing a text on Kindle? That is, because the type size is variable, there are no page numbers in a Kindle edition; instead, there is a running locator at the bottom of each screen. I’m wondering whether it would be permissible to cite these location numbers rather than look up my quotes in a hard copy of the text.
A. Yes, you can cite the location numbers, although unless a reader has the Kindle edition of that work, the numbers will be of little use for finding the text. Like unpaged online content, Kindle editions are best cited with reference to chapter titles or numbers, subheadings, or a unique phrase that can be located by searching. For more details, including examples, see CMOS 14.160.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Dear CMS staff: We are editing a multiauthor scientific book. One of the authors is dedicating his chapter to someone. Generally,
a dedication is part of prelims and belongs to the entire book. I could not find any style for this kind of case. Could you
please suggest how to set this line?
A. Certainly. You can set it as an unnumbered footnote on the first page of the chapter or at the beginning of the endnotes.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Dear Manual of Style: My friend and I are having a disagreement about whether or not “smoking gun” must be hyphenated when used as an adjective (i.e., smoking-gun evidence vs. smoking gun evidence). He believes that it is appropriate to hyphenate, citing CMOS. I believe that when the hyphen is unnecessary to help a reader differentiate a compound adjective from two adjacent adjectives that each independently modify the noun, it is unnecessary to hyphenate (e.g., chocolate chip cookie, high school teacher). Which one of us is correct?
A. I agree with you, but someone has to decide whether the adjectives are safe without the hyphen. If you want to be absolutely sure that no one will think the teacher is high on something or the evidence has been set on fire, you should add a hyphen to “high school” and “smoking gun.”
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
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 in small caps (B.C.). Although this style is fine (we prefer BC), small caps can get lost during the transfer of copy from one electronic platform to another (such as copying and emailing). 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.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Our students often use primary source documents, and now that there are many online archives, we have a wide variety of sources
from which to choose. I am trying to create a style sheet for some of the more difficult citations, and I have discovered
one that does not seem to fit cleanly into any example. The website is actually an HTML version of a periodical/journal article
from 1924. The periodical is part of a special collection archive housed at a university archive. Do I cite it as a periodical
and leave out the university archive connection? Do I cite it as a website and leave out the periodical/journal information?
There does not seem to be an example that would let me include both the archive connection and the journal information.
A. If the CMOS example that comes closest to meeting your needs doesn’t include everything you like, please don’t
take it as a prohibition against adding more information. You might train your students to include the information they think
is interesting, relevant, or helpful, in the order they think best serves the reader.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. If one wished to refer to a particular published article a number of times in one’s own writing, how
would one abbreviate the title, since titles can be lengthy? For example, I see an article: “To Dissect
or Not: Student Choice-in-Dissection Laws Ensure the Freedom to Choose,” published in volume 37, number
2, of the April 2008 edition of Journal of Law & Education, from the University of South Carolina. How would one concisely refer to said title?
A. The first few words should do it: “To Dissect or Not.”
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. When doing footnotes, do you put a footnote after every sentence, even if two or more consecutive sentences are from the
same source and same page? Or can it be assumed that, regardless of the punctuation (as long as it is in the same paragraph),
all that came after the last citation and before the footnote you just inserted is part of the same source and same page?
A. Footnotes should be placed where you need them, not according to a rule. Whenever you can imagine the reader asking “Says
who?” you should add a note. It’s not true that the reader can assume that everything
between one footnote and the next is attributable to the first source, since most writers interject their own arguments or
conclusions between the borrowed materials. If everything in a paragraph is from the same source, however, it’s
enough to put one note at the end of the paragraph.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. In a self-published novel, do you need the permission of a certain company to mention a product name/brand or other trademarked
title?
A. You don’t need permission. Fortunately, we are all free to speak and write about Porsches and Jimmy
Choos whether or not we can afford to buy them.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I am editing a nonfiction manuscript of interviews with several fiction writers. The author uses ellipses (fairly often) to indicate a long pause in speech or thought. Is this a correct use of ellipses? How do you differentiate between long pauses and omissions of some lines within the transcribed conversation?
A. Yes, ellipses are properly used to indicate long pauses. If you also use them to indicate omissions, then you need to differentiate them and explain in a note how you do so. One way is to use a plain ellipsis for a pause . . . and a bracketed ellipsis [. . .] for an omission.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]