Q. Is there text in CMOS that explains that placing a footnote number or symbol at the nearest point of punctuation—rather than at the precise point of reference—will not mislead the reader? I know I have seen such an explanation, but I cannot find it in CMOS. If it no longer appears in CMOS, can you point me to a source?
Q. I have a question about citing journal articles that are in print but have only been accessed online, where the online version is a PDF identical to the print version. CMOS states that you need to cite the DOI or URL. What is wrong with citing the page number of the print version as it appears on the PDF, if all things are identical?
Q. I am preparing an author-date-style reference list for a forthcoming book by my professor. She would like to include a paper that I wrote for her class in the fall. How do I do this? I have no intention of publishing the paper in the near future.
Q. The first time an author is cited in text it would appear thus: (Brown 1999, 34). The way I have been citing this author thereafter is (Brown, 56). Is that okay, or must I always put the year in the citation? If there is an author who has two works, I assume the year must always be reproduced. And if an author is cited with others, e.g., (Brown 1999; Harris 2002), should the year be put in the next time I cite only Brown?
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?
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.
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?
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?
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?
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.