Manuscript Preparation, Copyediting, and Proofreading

Q. The Chicago Manual is a thick guide that is difficult to follow. As a student and researcher, I find it difficult to find the appropriate citation for the cover page, in-text citations, and paper formatting. As a student in the library science field, it would be nice if the 17th edition of the Chicago Manual lacked these problems. If you are a newbie looking through the Chicago Manual, you don’t want to get a migraine or go blind from reading it.

A. It seems to me that you’re using The Chicago Manual of Style, which is for preparing manuscripts for publication, instead of Kate Turabian’s A Manual for Writers, which explains how to prepare class papers and theses in Chicago style. CMOS does not cover the formatting of student papers, but Turabian gives detailed guidelines. See also the For Students pages at the CMOS Shop Talk blog for the answers to many basic questions about paper writing, including paper setup.