Q. Dear CMOS editors: Some colleagues are having a debate over whether an author’s personal life story written in third person should be considered an autobiography or a biography. The manuscript’s classification will drive decisions about including documentation in the work. Your help with this issue will be greatly appreciated.
A. It sounds as though you’re planning to classify this work based on a single factor: that it’s written in the third person. But that’s probably not a strong enough criterion. The decision should be made on the basis of the content of the book, more than the style it’s written in. Classifying a manuscript in this way might do more harm than good if the classification (rather than the actual content) drives major decisions such as whether to include documentation. Try to find other criteria for deciding how to classify the book, and don’t disallow a bibliography just because you choose one or the other. If possible, consult a librarian for more help on classifying your project.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Dear CMOS, in one of the articles I’m editing, the authors have a list of documents, where each document title is followed by a descriptive phrase. The title and phrase are separated by a colon. (1) Should the first word in the phrase be lowercase? The authors tend to capitalize it, but I think it should be lowercase (unless it’s a proper noun). (2) Would it be more appropriate to use an em dash instead of a colon? Here’s an example:
Guide: Step-by-step instructions to fill out
Best Practices: Frequently asked questions about best practices
Dedicated Observations: Information on dedicated background exposures
A. Although this isn’t a glossary, it behaves like one, so the guidelines for glossaries would probably serve you well. CMOS 2.23 (“Format for Glossaries and Lists of Abbreviations”) suggests a period, colon, or em dash after the entry. CMOS also suggests beginning the definition with a capital letter. (In a list of abbreviations, however, the definition should be uppercased or lowercased according to the meaning of the abbreviation.) Given that there is flexibility, accommodate the writers’ preference if you can.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. OK, so the one-space-between-sentences debate has been beaten to death. However, are there any instances where putting two spaces between two things is appropriate?
A. Nope! Not in Chicago style. One of the steps our editors include in their final manuscript cleanup before typesetting is to run a macro that changes every instance of two spaces to one. Where extra space is needed (such as for indentations), it is created with tabs or paragraph settings, not by entering multiple spaces. Sometimes a writer uses spaces to create complex content (such as poetry or “word pictures”) that the editor wants to preserve. In that case, the editor must send special instructions to prevent the typesetters from messing everything up with their own macros.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. When the publication date appearing at the top of the copyright page (identical with the copyright) differs from the date appearing in the Cataloging-in-Publication (CIP) data at the bottom of the page, which is preferable to use for purposes of documentation? I have found that the CIP date is often, or at least occasionally, one year earlier than the publication date appearing as copyright (e.g., 2011 and 2012).
A. Use the information provided by the publisher, not the CIP. As you say, the actual publication of a book may be delayed significantly after CIP was applied for, and publishers don’t always file a correction. In fact, many publications don’t list CIP data or aren’t eligible for the program, which is metadata for librarians.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. For a dissertation being submitted for defense should block quotes be double or single spaced? There seems to be some disagreement on this point between different writing centers.
A. If your instructor and dissertation office have no preference, either choice is fine, but Chicago/Turabian always defers to a student’s local guidelines.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. What size font do footnotes need to be if the text is 12 pt. in an essay?
A. For student papers, Chicago style is covered in detail in Kate L. Turabian’s Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (9th ed.). Turabian advises, “In general, use the equivalent of at least ten-point Arial or twelve-point Times New Roman for the body of the text. (Some fonts, like Arial, take up more space on a line and appear larger than other fonts at the same point size.) Footnotes or endnotes, headings, tables, and other elements might require other type sizes or fonts; check your local guidelines.” Turabian contains several illustrations of student papers and their formatting.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Hello CMS. A quick one, please. Can a book have two dedication pages? One for “To someone” and one for “For someone.”
A. In a book with more than one author it could make sense to have two separate dedication pages, but for a book by a single writer it seems awkward—especially if they are on consecutive recto pages, which might look as though a page from someone else’s book accidentally ended up in yours. Alternatives include putting the dedications on the same page, on facing pages, or back to back. A good graphic designer should be able to suggest an ideal solution.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I am wondering about line spacing for block quotes and lines of dialogue. If the rest of my article is double-spaced, should my block quotes be single-spaced (so they are more legible as someone else’s words)? I have seen block quotes indented and single-spaced in journals, but I am not sure if that is a CMOS guideline.
A. In a typed manuscript, prose extracts should be indented and have the same line spacing as the surrounding text (see CMOS 2.8 and 2.19); they do not need to appear in a smaller font. When the extracts are printed in a book or journal, they will be styled according to that publication’s design template, which almost certainly will be single-spaced and possibly in a smaller text size.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I’m editing a book manuscript that requires emphasis on the first letter of specific words throughout. It’s about a self-assessment system based on two acronyms. Assume one of them is ACRONYM, and the words are Ack Crud Retch Omigod No Yikes Mortified. The author treats the words two different ways, neither of which is particularly readable:
- Capped, in quotation marks: Take your allotment of “A”ck, align it with your “C”rud, evaluate your “R”etch.
- Capped, with the remainder of the word in parentheses: Is your O(migod) serving your N(o) in this enterprise? Will you have enough Y(ikes) to keep you M(ortified)?
Clearly, neither of these is acceptable. How can I make this manuscript readable? I know she will insist on keeping the initial caps, even in the middle of sentences, because the acronym is trademarked. But after I strip out the quotation marks and/or parentheses from these words, how do I make it clear the initial caps aren’t typos? Boldface? Italics?
A. Oh dear. Bolding the initial letter is probably best (if by best we mean “least crappy”).
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Consistent with CMOS 2.10, our office does not use full justification for typed materials. Some of my colleagues go a step further to avoid hyphenation across lines, which they believe is distracting to the reader, and use only nonbreaking hyphens. I can’t find any support for this in CMOS (or elsewhere). It seems to me that it could cause the “exceedingly uneven lines” that CMOS 7.47 speaks of (for example, in the event of a several-words-long phrasal adjective). So please settle our debate: should we ordinarily use nonbreaking hyphens, or is it just fine for hyphenated terms to break across ragged-margin lines?
A. CMOS 2.13 reveals all! “Do not worry if such a hyphen happens to fall at the end of a line or if the right-hand margin is extremely ragged.”
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]