Q. Which is currently accepted: Web site, web site, website, or Website?
Q. I get so tired of reading about writers using their “spell-checkers” on their
computers. Surely they mean “spelling-checkers” don’t they?
I’ve always thought that only wizards use “spell-checkers”—what
do you think? I love CMOS—read it all the time—I start browsing and I can’t stop!
Thanks again for a great resource!
A. I would guess that the menus in word-processing programs and their need for brevity in order to ensure that an intelligible
portion of a phrase can be displayed are probably partly to blame for the ubiquitous phrases “spell
checker” and “spell check.” Microsoft Word’s
help menu (for version 9/2000), for example, lists the following:
Ways to check spelling
Customize spell checking
Troubleshoot spell checking
Check spelling
But to their credit, once you select either of the middle two, the actual documentation has an expanded title, as follows:
Customize spelling and grammar checking
Troubleshoot spelling and grammar checking
So it appears that someone at Microsoft at least partly agrees with you, expanding “spell”
to “spelling” when there’s ample room.
WordPerfect (version 9) lists “Spell Checker” in its Tools menu. But to their
credit, in their documentation they seem only to use the phrase when referring specifically to a menu item (and exact nomenclature
is important in such settings) or to the title of a small dialog box.
Older versions of WordPerfect, such as WordPerfect 5.1, used “spell” as a verb
meaning roughly “to check the spelling in a document.”
Beyond any of those theories of how people have been influenced to say something as ungrammatical as “spell
check,” I wouldn’t know where to begin. But if you ask me how to spell check,
I can tell you: c-h-e-c-k.
Q. I could not find the term “dot-com” addressed, and I need to know how to capitalize
it and punctuate it. I have seen both dot.com, and dot-com. Which is correct? In capitalizing titles, is it Dot.com or Dot.Com
(in title headings, etc.)?
A. We write “dot-com”: dot-com fantasies. We do not write “dot.com”—that would read “dot
dot com.” In titles, capitalize the d and the c: “Mogul’s Dot-Com Dreams Leak Like RAM from a Cheap Chip.”
Q. We’re trying to find a definitive style for representing file names, commands, and computer buttons
(e.g., click “exit”) in text. For file names, for example, I’ve
found quotation marks, italics, all caps, boldface . . . you name it, including
no differentiation at all. How would you suggest treating a file name in a sentence such as “Open the
readme.rtf file before continuing with the installation”? What about commands in a sentence such as
“Click on File and select Open”?
A. For commands, icons, keys, etc., an important consideration is to match the capitalization of the software or hardware being
invoked. Fortunately such items tend to be capitalized, which helps to set terms off from the run of text without introducing
italics or other distinctions:
Choose Save As, under File (or press F12), before you make another move.
You can assign shortcuts to a Ctrl+Alt key combination to launch most Windows applications.
File names may be set in italics or in a different font. An elegant alternative is to relegate them to parentheses:
Open the third chapter (John Doe and the problem of anonymity.wpd) and run the cleanup macro (clean_me).
Words to be typed can be set in bold or in a different font, or both, like this:
Type vacation stop at the prompt, then hit Enter.
Quotation marks, unless they are an explicit element of a command or label, should be avoided—though
they may be helpful, used consistently, to delimit file names (which may or may not have telltale extensions and even if they
do may be impossible to distinguish from the run of text, as in the WPD example above). Consistency is the key—set
up a style sheet tailored to your needs (e.g., a software manual would generally merit greater use of bold and italics to
distinguish commands from labels and file names), and stick with it.
Q. My question is, is there any standard for the usage of emoticons? In particular, is there an accepted practice for the use
of emoticons that include an opening or closing parenthesis as the final token within a set of parentheses? Should I (1) incorporate
the emoticon into the closing of the parentheses (giving a dual purpose to the closing parenthesis, such as in this case.
:-) (2) simply leave the emoticon up against the closing parenthesis, ignoring the bizarre visual effect of the doubled closing
parenthesis (as I am doing here, producing a doubled-chin effect :-)) (3) put a space or two between the emoticon and the
closing parenthesis (like this: :-) ) (4) or avoid the situation by using a different emoticon (Some emoticons are similar.
:-D), placing the emoticon elsewhere, or doing without it (i.e., reword to avoid awkwardness)?
A. Until academic standards decline enough to accommodate the use of emoticons, I’m afraid CMOS is unlikely to treat their styling, since the manual is aimed primarily at scholarly publications. And the problems you’ve
posed in this note give us added incentive to keep our distance. (But I kind of like that double-chin effect.)
Q. In your bibliography, do you type in your websites so they will be “active”?
A. Most of the manuscripts we edit are going to be printed on paper, so there’s no possibility of a live
link. When we prepared the manuscript for CMOS Online , however, we made the URLs active in the bibliography as a convenience to readers.
Q. When publishing a web address in a print publication, do you recommend underlining it (as it would appear on the web), bolding
it, or doing nothing? Is one way better than another when the web address is at the end of the sentence (thus, followed by
a period)? Example: For more information, visit www.chicagomanualofstyle.org.
A. No, we don’t recommend any special treatment for URLs, and we don’t worry when they come at the end of a sentence. (Sometimes, your browser won’t fuss if you include a period at the end of a URL in the address box—try it.) You can find samples of Chicago-style citations that include URLs right here at this site. Just go to our Citation Quick Guide.
Q. I edit documents used in the healthcare informatics domain, where e-health, eHealth, e-community, e-practice, and other ever-growing
variations on the “e-” are present. If the “e-”
or the “e” plus a word begins a sentence, I am capitalizing that darn “e.”
Otherwise, it looks very strange. Am I correct?
A. For hyphenated e-constructions, we agree:
So far, it has proved impossible to read an e-book without some form of electricity.
E-books are ubiquitous enough that in several years people may simply call them “books.”
For a proper name, however, we leave things alone: eBay is always eBay, even at the beginning of a sentence.
Q. What is the plural of email when it’s used as a noun?
A. Use email (not emails) or email messages for the plural form of the noun (“she gets a lot of email”); except informally, emails is better reserved for use as a verb (“he emails reminders to himself”). And whereas Merriam-Webster lists both e-mail (hyphen) and email (no hyphen), Chicago now prefers the latter.
Q. According to CMOS, computer menu items are capitalized. The editors I work with insist that a menu item from a specific website (such as yours) should also be placed in quotation marks. Here’s an example: Click on “About the Manual” to learn about changes made to the recent edition. I think the quotation marks are unnecessary. What do you think?
A. I think they’re fine, especially when the item consists of several words. Otherwise it could be confusing, especially if the sentence contains words that must be capped but that aren’t part of a menu item name. In a given document, if all menu items are single words or familiar phrases (such as Page Down), then caps are enough. If some items require quotation marks, however, then all should have them.