Manuscript Preparation, Copyediting, and Proofreading

Q. What is a callout?

A. A callout tells a typesetter where to place a figure. The callout itself is not meant to appear in type, so it has to be flagged somehow as a nonprinting instruction—for instance, <!Fig. 1 near here!>. You will find this in CMOS by typing “callout” into the Search box or looking under “callout” in the index.

[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]