Q. Hello, I would like to know how to handle citations to books that list a subsequent printing date. Some books will say, for example, “Copyright 1975” and elsewhere on the copyright page will list the various printing dates, such as “2nd printing 1979, 3rd printing 1985, 4th printing 1992.”
Should my references point to the original copyright date, or the subsequent printing date? I have searched in vain to find a definitive answer to this or any concrete examples. Thank you very much for the help!
A. Use the copyright date as the publication date in your citation. Printings after the first may include minor corrections but are otherwise intended by publishers to be substantially the same as earlier printings.
In the rare case that you are relying on a portion of the text that’s changed from one printing to another—and you happen to notice the discrepancy—mention the situation in your text or in a note. For example, “This citation relies on the fourth printing of Smith’s book; the first three printings refer, incorrectly, to the British Museum rather than the British Library.”
Note that a numbered printing (or impression) isn’t the same as a numbered edition, the latter of which must always be cited (see CMOS 1.26 and 14.113).
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Can a building or other similar place or geographical feature be cited as a source according to CMOS?
A. Anything can be cited. Your cat. Jay Leno’s cars. But there’s no standard bibliographic format for cats or cars—let alone buildings or mountains or the like. Instead, describe the entity in the text or in a note, using as much detail as required to make your point. Then cite the source of any facts or other details that wouldn’t be considered common knowledge:
Construction of the Guangzhou Opera House, designed by Zaha Hadid, was completed in 2010 at a cost of more than $200 million.1
1. Victoria Newhouse, Site and Sound: The Architecture and Acoustics of New Opera Houses and Concert Halls (New York: Monacelli Press, 2012), 194.
If you need a list—for example, of buildings designed by a particular firm or belonging to a certain style or otherwise sharing common features that are relevant to your reason for writing about them—then create one. Listing under the name of the architect or firm would be one approach:
Zaha Hadid Architects. Guangzhou Opera House. Guangzhou, China. Completed in 2010.
Add other details as relevant to your study, and otherwise adjust as needed. But make this a separate list; don’t hide such info in a bibliography, where readers are apt to miss it among books and other cited documents.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I am editing a book, converting it from APA to Chicago. The publisher/author has made the choice to not include a bibliography. My question is how to write the note when there are more than four authors. Should each author be cited, or only the first plus “et al.”?
A. Follow the rule for bibliographies and list up to ten authors; if more than ten, list the first seven followed by “et al.” In subsequent notes to the same source, use a short form (in which only the first author is listed, followed by “et al.”). But if space is an issue, list up to six authors in the first note; if more than six, list the first three followed by “et al.” In either case, repeat the full form of the note for the first citation in each chapter. See also CMOS 14.76.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. How should I cite in the text multiple publications by the same author? Can I simply write (Sutinen 1969, 1976, 1981)? Or should I write (Sutinen 1969, Sutinen 1976, Sutinen 1981)?
A. Though there’s a risk that the additional years might be misread as page numbers (at least initially), your first approach is preferred for its brevity. But if page numbers are also cited, use semicolons instead of commas: (Sutinen 1969; 1976, 257; 1981). See CMOS 15.30 for more details and examples.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. When creating a shortened note for a specific episode of a television program, what information should be included?
A. Let’s say you mention the third episode of the second season of the American version of The Office, and you add a note citing that episode. Here’s what that note might look like:
1. The Office, season 2, episode 3, “Office Olympics,” written by Michael Schur, directed by Paul Feig, aired October 4, 2005, on NBC.
After that, the episode could be mentioned in the text again without a note. But if you did want to add a note—for example, to cite a specific moment in the episode—you could do this:
2. “Office Olympics,” at 18 min., 5 sec.
Or you could use the series title (a good strategy when the episodes are untitled, or when the episode titles aren’t meaningful):
2. The Office, S2E3, at 18 min., 5 sec.
Either version of the shortened note tells readers that whatever you’ve quoted or described in the text begins eighteen minutes, five seconds into the third episode of the second season of The Office.
All this assumes you need a note in the first place. TV shows aren’t like books and other written documents, and readers aren’t usually expected to consult them for themselves. Even in a book about American office culture, the following information in the text wouldn’t always need a note:
Work as play is also the theme in “Office Olympics,” the third episode from the second season of NBC’s The Office, . . .
That’s enough information in most contexts to understand the source of the information—no note required.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Greetings. I am a copyeditor of academic books. One reviewer of my work recently challenged a decision of mine to expand “NYU Press” as “New York University Press.” Is there any rule in CMOS that requires spelling out a university’s name when it is abbreviated in the publisher’s name? I have normally tended to expand publisher’s names when they are not that well known. I leave MIT Press alone.
A. Normally, the cited form of a book publisher’s name should match what appears on the title page. A brief survey of books published since the 1990s suggests that “New York University Press” is how that publisher presents its name on its title pages. Here’s how it appears at the bottom of the title page in a 2022 book by Lilie Chouliaraki and Myria Georgiou:
That book would be cited in a bibliography as follows:
Chouliaraki, Lilie, and Myria Georgiou. The Digital Border: Migration, Technology, Power. New York: New York University Press, 2022.
And though “NYU Press” would be fine for mentions in the text—after all, that’s how that press brands itself at its website—it’s usually best in source citations to record a publisher’s name as it appears in the source itself. But you don’t always need to use every word. Books published by the MIT Press include an initial “The” in the publisher’s name, as at the bottom of the title page in Gender(s), a book from 2021 by Kathryn Bond Stockton:
Chicago would omit the The and style the citation as follows:
Stockton, Kathryn Bond. Gender(s). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2021.
In sum, follow the title page, within reason. And rather than automatically spelling out a publisher’s name if you find it abbreviated in a source citation, it’s usually best to check what the source itself has.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. In author-date, how does one handle multiple forthcoming works by a single author? Does one use forthcominga, forthcomingb, etc.? Or maybe with a hyphen: forthcoming-a, forthcoming-b?
A. We like your second suggestion:
Smith, Jarell. Forthcoming-a. Title of First Work. City: Publisher.
Smith, Jarell. Forthcoming-b. Title of Second Work. City: Publisher.
These would then be cited in the text as (Smith, forthcoming-a) and (Smith, forthcoming-b). Normally there’s no comma between the author’s name and the date of publication in Chicago style—(Smith 2022a)—but we do make an exception in this case (as noted in CMOS 15.45).
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. When a journal changes its name, should I use the name of the journal when the article was published or the current name when citing an article contained in the journal?
A. Use the name of the journal when the article was published. For example,
Todd, Alexander. “Nucleic Acids and Their Role in Future Chemotherapy of Tumours and Virus Diseases.” British Medical Journal 2, no. 5151 (1959): 517–22.
If you want to signal to readers that the journal now uses a different name, mention that fact in your text or in a note—or add a bracketed clarification to your citation as follows:
Todd, Alexander. “Nucleic Acids and Their Role in Future Chemotherapy of Tumours and Virus Diseases.” British Medical Journal [now BMJ] 2, no. 5151 (1959): 517–22.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I have scoured the CMOS website and searched online, but I am stymied. I have quoted someone’s Twitter bio. How do I cite it?? Please help.
A. In most contexts, it’s enough simply to mention the bio in the text. Twitter bios are subject to change without notice, so add a date:
As of August 1, 2022, Mindy Kaling’s Twitter bio (@mindykaling) consisted of just two words: “new money.”
If you are expected (as for a school paper) to include a more formal citation, it may be styled as follows (as in a footnote):
1. Mindy Kaling (@mindykaling), “new money,” Twitter bio, accessed August 1, 2022, https://twitter.com/mindykaling.
Note, however, that a Twitter bio isn’t worth adding to a bibliography; a tweet, however, might be, as some will consist of an extended thread that approaches the level of a news article or blog post. For more details and an example, see CMOS 14.209.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. In a parenthetical citation that includes volume and page number, what’s the correct way to style subsequent, nonconsecutive page numbers from the same volume? Should the volume be stated only once, like so: (Barnes 1998, 2:354–55, 370, 381)? Or should the volume number be repeated at the start of each page number, like so: (Barnes 1998, 2:354–55, 2:370, 2:381)? I’m unable to find an example like this in the Manual. Guidance much appreciated!
A. In your first example, it seems clear that pages 370 and 381 belong, like pages 354 and 355, to volume 2. Not only is it unlikely that they’d instead be taken to belong to volume 1, but repeating the volume numbers (as in your second example) doesn’t seem to make the citation any easier to read. The same principle would apply to citing consecutive page locations from the same volume in a note. (We’ve made a note to consider adding some examples of these scenarios to a future edition of CMOS.)
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]