Q. One of our publishers wants to prepare the index for a book from the terms the author has provided before the copyediting is done. This is quite unusual considering the revisions the book will go through at later stages that will affect the page numbers. More importantly, what if some of the terms are edited or deleted during copyediting? What do you think we should tell them?
A. Tell them what you’ve told us. It’s unwise to prepare an index until the book pagination is set in stone. The amount of checking and editing needed to finalize the index after pagination would be nearly as much work as the initial preparation of the index. I suggest you point them to CMOS 16.102: “For a printed work, the indexer must have in hand a clean and complete set of proofs (usually showing final pagination) before beginning to index. . . . For a journal volume, the work may begin when the first issue to be indexed has been paginated.” The terms your writer compiled may be useful in preparing the index, but the actual work should wait.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Should a Chicago Manual–style research article be double-spaced, and should the footnotes be 12 pt type? This is a journal submission.
A. Yes. Chicago style for all manuscripts is to double-space everything, and 12 pt type is the industry standard.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Hello! The material we edit often includes editorial insertions about actions such as [laughs] and [sings]. Could you please recommend which of these is best usage? These aren’t stage directions but rather editorial insertions (in transcriptions).
a. [Sings:] Hallelujah.
b. [Sings]: Hallelujah.
c. [Sings: Hallelujah].
A. First, you don’t actually need a colon. “[Sings] Hallelujah” does the trick. If you must add a colon, since it is not part of the original transcript it should go inside the brackets. Thus (a) and (c) are correct. To test an interpolation’s format, remove the bracketed material; it should leave your text in its original shape. You can see that if you delete the bracketed material from (b), you’re left with a mysterious colon:
b. : Hallelujah.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I am currently editing a manual of laws for a government agency. The format follows a legislative bill, but the formats I find online are not consistent. Headings/subheadings are as follows:
1. Main heading is ARTICLE
2. Several subheadings / run in text are SECTION #
3. Some subheadings have vertical lists
Do I flush-left the “SECTION # subheading? Do the lists that follow start with an arabic numeral, a letter in parentheses, or Section #.# (e.g., 1.1, 1.2, 1.3)? Or does context have a play here? I’m in a quandary.
A. Since there seems to be no set style, devise your own system by making the best sense of the hierarchy you can, and then edit according to your plan. Where the current format makes it hard for you to understand the hierarchy, take care to query rather than misrepresent the content by assigning a level yourself.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. If sidebars or text boxes in a book have text references, what labels are used? They aren’t exactly figures or tables. Something like “(see text box 1.1)” doesn’t seem like a good solution, so could short titles be used instead, or is there a more elegant label I haven’t thought of?
A. “Box 1” (or “box 1.1” if you start over in each chapter) is the usual way to label text boxes. A title without a number wouldn’t give any clue to the location or sequence of the box, so in a long document or a document with many boxes, titles are not as helpful as numbering.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. In a book printed with two columns per page, how should footnotes be handled? In two columns? Running across the entire page? If the former, should the notes in each column start at the same height on the page, or is it okay for them to be at different heights?
A. Putting the notes in two columns is ideal, but you must make sure that each note falls at the foot of the column it is called out in. Because the number and length of the notes for each column might vary dramatically, it’s not practical to always begin the notes at the same height. If this is an important project, consider hiring a graphic designer who specializes in scholarly books to make these decisions based on page size, column width, words per page, length of the notes, type sizes, etc. Otherwise, just use your best aesthetic sense and aim for readability and balance.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. In an online user documentation set, is “Appendix” or “Appendixes” the correct top-level heading? Under this heading, there will be multiple unrelated topics. Is each one an appendix? Or should I refer to the group of topics as the appendix? Since this is online, I do not intend to use “Appendix A, Appendix B,” and so on. I will use descriptive headings such as “Working with Nontemplate Databases’ Deprecated Features.”
A. You are the best one to decide. If you use “Appendixes,” give each topic its own page and list the links using the descriptive heads as page titles. If you use “Appendix,” put all your topics on a single page, with the descriptive heads serving as subheadings. If the topics are truly unrelated, or if there is an advantage to having a unique URL for each one, then the former option is probably best.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. At the beginning of each interview in my book, I use an “epigraph” from the interviewee. My publisher, citing CMOS, tells me that the epigraph, which is not signed, cannot be centered. This makes the one or two-line epigraph look like a misprint. Can you tell me what is correct in these cases? The editor has never cited a specific CMOS reference, but just tells me “That’s the way it is.”
A. The position of an epigraph is normally decided by a graphic designer as part of a coherent design for the book as a whole. Depending on the design of the rest of your book, centered epigraphs might look amateurish. Your editor is probably referring to the design specifications, and he or she may be reluctant to ask a designer to change the specs. It’s fine to express your concern and ask whether the design can be tweaked. Centering is only one of many options.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Would you share a sample of proofreading marks on a manuscript page? I refer to figure 2.6 from CMOS, but it does not explain where to position marks on the line and/or in the margins.
Q. I’m a book publisher editing a memoir by a physician who served in the military, and most of the individuals described in the memoir are also military physicians. The first time our narrator mentions another military physician, we might say, “The commander of the base was Dr. Sherman Potter, a Navy captain.” Then, in subsequent references, we are using just “Potter.” These doctors called each other only by their last names in conversation, so continuing to say “Dr. Potter” in the text would feel overly formal and would not be parallel with the dialogue. However, it feels overly casual to immediately switch to “Potter” from “Dr. Sherman Potter.” Is it crazy and overly complicated to suggest that first references remain “Dr. Sherman Potter,” the second reference be to “Dr. Potter,” and the third and subsequent references be merely to “Potter”? I am, of course, in a huge hurry to solve this extraordinary important issue in my life and your rescue is greatly appreciated.
A. In a memoir, the writer is usually the best person to be in charge of what people are called. (Consistency in such a matter is something only an editor would come up with.) A person might call a young colleague “Jones” but an esteemed elderly mentor “Dr. Potter.” Likewise, the writer might not want to introduce every character by a full name on first mention. He might not even want to reveal that a person is a doctor on first mention. These are nuances that an editor must respect. Use your judgment to query anything in this regard that strikes you as out of whack. That should be enough. (And while you’re at it, better double-check whether Dr. Potter is actually an army colonel!)
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]