Chicago Manual of Style, 15e

For nearly two decades, I have required my students to create a bibliography. I demand that they follow the Turabian style manual—Turabian— in creating their bibliographies. Most students think that the sole style manual is the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers because most freshman composition teachers require the MLA Handbook. Turabian is based upon the Chicago Manual of Style. At times, students have asked me why I require them to use Turabian. I reply that Kate L. Turabian was the graduate school dissertation secretary at the University of Chicago from 1930 to 1958. What that means is that no master's thesis or doctoral dissertation received final approval until she said it was in proper style. The principles that guided her in this work are codified in her famous book, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, now in its 6^thedition, revised by John Grossman and Alice Bennett (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).  Experienced scholars refer to this book simply as Turabian. It is the standard style manual used in college history courses as well as most scholarly history journals.

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From the issue dated July 25, 2003

For the 15th Time, Look It Up: 'The Chicago Manual of Style' enters the 21st century

By PETER MONAGHAN

In writing about the time of day, the lowercase form, p.m. -- with periods -- now is preferred to the small-capitals form pm, without periods.

The month-day-year form, as in August 15, 2003, now wins out over the form 15 August 2003.

And when using letters to represent shapes, as in "an L-shaped room," there's no need anymore to use sans-serif type for the letter, as in "L-shaped."

Small matters those may be, but the editors, authors, proofreaders, indexers, copywriters, and designers who venerate The Chicago Manual of Style, the indispensable guide to dotting one's i's and citing to a T, revel in such minutiae. The most recent version, published in 1993, has sold more than half a million copies. Next month, the University of Chicago Press will release the 15th edition of the Manual, an imposing, 956-page tome that has become the unquestioned arbiter of disagreements among "gropers in the labyrinths of style," as the editors of the first edition put it in 1906.

Gropers will find much to fuss over, even though many of the 15th edition's changes are, allows Linda Halvorson, its chief editor, "not that sexy." For example: The two-letter abbreviations used by the U.S. Postal Service for states are now preferred, but use traditional forms like "Miss." and "Wash.," if you must. Place names that include "St." or "Saint" may all be rendered as "St."

Other changes are more obscure. In botanical usage, "fanciful names" of varieties are enclosed with single quotation marks; any punctuation that follows is placed after the closing quotation mark, as in "the hybrid Agastache 'Apricot Sunrise', best grown. ... "

Almost cabalistic are 16 paragraphs (11.51-66) on the methods -- now three -- for entering ellipsis points: the three-dot, three-or-four-dot, and "rigorous" methods.

The chief innovation of the new edition has been to thread coverage of electronic publishing throughout the Manual, to address "all of the changes in the way people now work with words," says Anita Samen, the 15th edition's chief manuscript editor. People wonder, she says, "what is a publication anymore? And, what is a page?" Previous editions dealt primarily with the traditional book. The new edition also takes on journals, electronic publications, online multimedia, informally published material, and even corporate reports, publicity material, and the like.

Computerization is most strongly reflected in a revised section on the frustrating business of citation. How, for example, to cite an evolving Web site whose earlier pages have become inaccessible, or one that has been discontinued? Should one cite the shortest functioning version of a URL, rather than always include, for example, "http://www ... "? And should one record the dates on which sites were accessed?

Such conundrums were carefully weighed, says Ms. Halvorson. Two schools of thought emerged during the editors' deliberations.

"We actually wrote drafts one way and then the other way, and talked it out, and then the people who didn't think full URL's were necessary, or that access dates were particularly useful, were persuaded." Persuaded? The editorial equivalent of a bloodbath? No, says Ms. Halvorson, it all went down easily.

For the first time, with this edition, the press's renowned editorial department consulted outside advisers, and formed a panel of experienced editors in academe, industry, and journalism. They also sought comments on Internet bulletin boards of editors and university professors, and made use of the Manual's World Wide Web site, whose 250,000 user "hits" last year raised many questions of style. In turn, the Web site has been greatly expanded for the new edition.

Computers were, then, both a medium for preparing the Manual and one of its key new emphases. The 14th edition had touched on computerization, at a time when computer technologies were poised to revolutionize the production of texts. Even the 13th edition, in 1982, broached tentatively the then-nascent personal computers whose future success was just a glint in pioneers' eyes.

'Schoolmarmy Tone'

Though it's hard to imagine, some authors still do use typewriters. But much has changed over the history of the guide. It was only with the Manual's 10th edition, in 1937, that approval ended for submitting manuscripts "either typewritten or in a perfectly clear handwriting."

Homely stipulations in a "schoolmarmy tone" were common in the early editions, Catharine Seybold observed in a 1983 article about the 12th and 13th editions, when she was one of the chief editors of "the bible." An admonition that authors should never roll up their manuscripts, repeated from the first through the eighth editions, reminded her of a mother warning her latchkey children never to stick beans up their noses. "Since this trick had never occurred to them," she says, "they of course tried it at once."

When the Chicago press opened in 1891, typesetters grappled with professors' handwriting to create galleys. Typesetters, and then editors and proofreaders, had to contend not just with standard English, but sometimes with baffling scientific terminology and writing conventions, as well as quotations in foreign languages as familiar as Latin and as exotic as Ethiopic.

Of the first Manual's 200 pages, 75 were devoted to rules for composition; technical terms got 12; and "Hints" to authors, editors, and others, 10. Almost 80 pages provided "specimens of type in use," including several pages of dandy initials, ornaments, and borders.

Directions to the copyholders -- the lowly employees who read manuscripts aloud to proofreaders -- provide a picture of the workplace. Copyholders were told: "Cultivate a low, soft, clear reading voice. Do not imagine that it is necessary for everyone in the room to hear you." That the copyholders were almost without exception female is underscored by such directions as "Remember that you are the housekeeper of the proofroom, and take pride in its neat and orderly appearance."

The Manual sweetened its "tone" with charming inflections: "Regulate and equalize your speed. Do not race at a breakneck pace through typewritten copy, while you thread your path fumblingly through the mazes of [handwritten] manuscript."

Still, from its outset, the Manual has generally been more about suggestion than direction—at least, more so than many cowed authors and editors imagine. The 1906 preface said: "Rules and regulations such as these, in the nature of the case, cannot be endowed with the fixity of rock-ribbed law. They are meant for the average case, and must be applied with a certain degree of elasticity. Exceptions will constantly occur, and ample room is left for individual initiative and discretion."

Detecting a tendency for the editors of later editions to present the Manual's rules as "the only sensible way," Ms. Seybold and her colleagues decided to re-emphasize that "we make no claim to being the final authority from which there must be no deviation whatever," she wrote in her 1983 essay.

Now, Ms. Halvorson reiterates, "Users should break or bend rules that don't fit their needs, as we often do ourselves."

It must be allowed that the editor's job is a difficult one. And it has not made it easier for Manual users that earlier versions of the guide had no chapter on grammar and usage, per se. Now, in response to many user requests, one has been included in the 15th edition. Written by Bryan A. Garner, the author of the highly regarded (and soon to be updated) A Dictionary of Modern American Usage (Oxford University Press, 1998), the chapter's purpose, says Ms. Samen, is to relieve Manual users of the need to go to other guides: "When you're beating your brains out over a manuscript and you have an author on the phone who is quite persnickety about grammar and you have a difference of opinion, you may know you know the rule, but it's good to be able to come up with chapter and verse."

Persnickety Writers?

Are academics, say, more difficult than others?

"Not at all," avers Ms. Samen. "But often they do want to know why you think the change is warranted. And that's perfectly fine."

With various additions, the Manual now is approaching 1,000 pages in length. So, some sections have been abbreviated, or even excised if they were especially outdated or specialized. Coverage of appropriate typography, for example, is now much-streamlined. The spirit remains, however, of a credo stated in the eighth edition: "A book, on its material side, is the visible embodiment of the subject it presents." The 11th edition of 1949 demurely cautioned: "Even a brilliant piece of writing will have difficulty finding a publisher if the author has neglected to dress his manuscript decently." To that end, it recommended, keep footnotes short and few, for they "add nothing to the appearance of the printed page."

No exception for academics was noted.

Copyright © 2003 by The Chronicle of Higher Education