Chicago Style Isn't Just Pizza

The Chicago Manual of Style, 15e, has been my stylistic Bible since the dawn of time. Most of the non-history teachers I knew—if they paid attention to style—allowed students to use the limp and nonscholarly manual utilized by the members of the Modern Language Association (MLA Manual of Style, 6e). In fact, the MLA manual comes in two flavors: one for high school students and undergradutates and the other for graduate students and scholars. Scholarly work should be scholarly work. Dumbing down for students helps no one. If this is (fair & balanced) snobbery, so be it.

[x Chicago Manual of Style]
New Questions and Answers

Q. I frequently read and hear what I believe is misuse of the first person reflexive pronoun “myself.” For example, someone sent me an e-mail requesting that I send him information. He wrote, “Please forward the information to myself.” Today I read a statement made by President Clinton [in 1997]. He said, “I have no recollection of ordering Trooper Ferguson to arrange a meeting between myself and Ms. Jones.” Is this correct? Or would it have been more correct to say “between me and Ms. Jones” or “between Ms. Jones and me”?

A. “Between Ms. Jones and me” is correct, although the use of “me” as a direct object is beginning to disappear from American speech. You will often hear people say, for instance, “Now she’s really annoyed with John and I.” This mistake falls into the category of “genteelisms,” or constructions that sound proper whether they are correct or not. On the other hand, perhaps in some kind of deplorable compensation, the use of “I” as a subject is also increasingly rare. Young people routinely say, “Me and Rocko went to the gym last night.” As for “myself,” see CMS 5.53: “Compound personal pronouns . . . are used for three purposes: (1) for emphasis (they are then termed intensive pronouns) {I saw Queen Beatrice herself} {I’ll do it myself}; (2) to refer to the subject of the verb (they are then termed reflexive pronouns) {he saved himself the trouble of asking} {we support ourselves}; and (3) to substitute for a simple personal pronoun {this getaway weekend is just for myself}. This third use is the least well established in modern usage. If a simple I or me will suffice, use that word.”


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Q. In the U.S. Army supply system, writers refer to requested supplies as dues-in (more than one due-in not yet received), and dues-out (more than one due-out not yet issued to a requestor). The GPO Style Manual (paragraph 5.7) seems to prescribe due-ins and due-outs as the correct plural form (examples they give are tie-ins, run-ins, come-ons). What do you say about these plural forms? Many thanks for your help!

A. If you are thinking of “due” as an adjective, then I agree that “due-ins” would be correct. If you think of it as a noun, however (see Webster), then “dues-in” would work just fine. In any case, if “dues-in” is the army colloquial, there’s probably no use fighting it. If it annoys you, try to think of it as a charming bit of insiders’ jargon.


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Q. CMS, 14th edition, paragraph 7.19, mentions that titles are commonly lowercase (president of the United States) but that there is an exception with the title of Speaker. There is debate in my office over the titles of archivist of the United States, Smithsonian secretary, and librarian of Congress. If they do not precede a name, do they remain lowercase?

A. Yes, lowercase the titles. After all, how fair would it be to lowercase the president and uppercase the librarian? The Speaker gets special treatment, though, probably because in an institution like the House, where everyone wants to talk and all the talk is recorded for posterity, it has to be clear whether the reference is to the presiding officer (the Speaker) or the person currently blabbing away (the speaker).


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Q. Hi. We are having a debate at work. We live in Madison, the capital city of Wisconsin. We recently moved into a new office space and named the main conference room the Capital Room. Many of us think it should be “Capitol” because it is named after the state capitol. Others think only the capitol building can be spelled with the “o.” Please advise us so we can get back to work. Thank you.

A. If the room is named for the state capital (city), it should be spelled with an a; if it’s named for the capitol building, it’s spelled with an o. I doubt that your state constitution restricts the use of the word “capitol” to the capitol building. In fact, I’d be surprised if it’s not being used by a pub or two.


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Q. Please confirm or contradict the following. The special grammatical role played by the relative pronoun “whoever” leads to a case that few seem to know how to handle: when its role in the main clause appears to be objective, but its role in the subordinate clause is nominative.

For instance, I frequently read things like “We will give the prize to whomever runs the fastest.” This is incorrect; it should be “whoever.” The rule is that the case of the relative pronoun is governed by its role in the subordinate clause, not the main clause. Thus, in this case, it is the subject of “runs” and is therefore nominative. The object of “to” is the entire clause “whoever runs the fastest.”

If you agree with this analysis, please put something on your site about it that I can refer people to. I have some arguments I would like to win :-)

A. We agree—good luck!


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Q. I find that some of my writers start a sentence with the word “Because,” and I am tempted to change it to “Since.” For example, one writes “Because the object is selected, it changes as you move the slider.”

I would prefer to have them use the word “Since”: “Since the object is selected, it changes as you move the slider.”

But, I am not sure of the correct usage . . . I am only going on gut instinct.

A. For editors, like physicians, the primary goal should be “First, do no harm.” If you are not sure of the correct usage, it’s safer not to meddle with the copy. In this case, your writer is correct. In fact, “Since” would be considered incorrect by traditionalists who restrict its meaning to a temporal one.


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Q. Your copy editing leaves something to be desired. In section 8.64, the correct spelling is Baudelaire, not Beaudelaire.

Also, you might want to add a place on the website to suggest corrigenda.

A. Thank you for taking the time to write. We depend on the kindness of our readers—and reader kindness overflowed when this typo made it into print. The error will be corrected in the next printing of the manual. You will find a place to send comments just above the place where you submit questions. Perhaps in future revisions of the Web page we can add a place for corrigenda—and what the heck—while we’re at it, one for chastisement.


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Q. Hello: I am working on writing and editing thank-you letters to faculty and staff participants in a curriculum session for third-year medical students. Should I treat “data” as a singular or a plural noun? I have been looking for a definitive answer to this question in online style manuals and grammar guides. If its answer is already in the CMS and you could refer me to the appropriate part of the Web site where this information is posted, that would be excellent.

A. If you type “data” into the search box on the CMS Web page, it will give you two places where the word is discussed in our Q&A, and you’ll see that it can be either singular or plural. For questions like this, however, I find that a dictionary is a very helpful tool. Judging from the number of queries we receive asking about the meaning or usage of particular words, it seems that people rarely think of using a dictionary, which is surprising, considering that it is much quicker to look up a word than to search through style manuals—or type a question to an online advice column. There are even online dictionaries, if turning paper pages seems too old-fashioned or too big a nuisance. In honor of your question, I’m tempted to create a new category of Q&A column called “You Could Look It Up” (in the hopes that readers will take the hint).


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Q. All my classes have previously used APA format. Now I need to use Chicago. Can you send me the format for my paper and how to cite references from the Internet and class textbook? Thank you.

A. The new edition of CMS is more than 950 pages long, and more than 150 pages concern documentation, so it’s a bit much to convey here or in an e-mail message. But you can find samples of Chicago-style footnotes and reference lists just a couple of clicks away. Choose “Tools” from the menu above this column, which will take you to “Examples of Chicago-Style Documentation.”


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Q. When referring to a movie or book title while posting to Internet newsgroups, it’s generally impossible to indicate with italics or underscoring. I usually use all upper-case letters (THE LORD OF THE RINGS, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, for example). What does CMS suggest?

A. Notwithstanding the tradition among publishers of presenting book titles in full capitals in industry correspondence, interdepartmental memos, and the like—the practice was popular because it saved time on typewriters that required extra keystrokes for underscoring—we recommend avoiding all capitals to express titles that would otherwise be italicized. Instead, use the underscore key (type Shift plus the hyphen key on standard keyboards) when italic type is unavailable:

When I first read _The History of the Siege of Lisbon_, I was so grateful to discover a book about a proofreader that Saramago’s hypnotic stringing together of sentences nearly sent me into an ecstatic trance.

Sometimes asterisks rather than the underscore key are used to express emphasis (e.g., I can’t *stand* one more day of separation from you), but asterisks can be more strictly interpreted as indicating boldface.


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Q. Which one is correct: “alright” or “all right”?

A. Dictionaries and style manuals still tend to indicate that alright is less legitimate than all right. The quasi- or nonstandard status of alright might be compared to that of the one-word forms of the compounds under way and a lot, both of which, to varying degrees, have had to resist the urge to merge. Context is everything. Alright is all right for rock ’n’ roll, but if you’re concerned about appearing to stand on the favored side of the “sociological divide,” as Fowler’s would have it, you will want to write all right (see the third edition, s.v. “all right,” which notes, among other things, that alright seems to be popular in the personal correspondence of “the moderately educated young”). In the case of all right versus alright, however, all this is plainly rather arbitrary—as may already be altogether obvious.


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Q. Our company has always presented costs to clients in both written and numerical form. For example, “The cost for our services is two thousand one hundred fifty dollars ($2,150).” One client has pointed out that the number in parentheses is negative and therefore we owe him money. How can we present numbers to clients in both written and numerical form without using the parentheses, which may indicate a negative number?

A. Parentheses are occasionally used instead of the minus sign in tabular matter (e.g., spreadsheets) to indicate negative quantities. In most contexts, however, parentheses set off text that explains or qualifies or amplifies the surrounding context—as in your example and often in contracts and other legal documents. Parentheses used in this way have no bearing on any quantities they enclose—monetary or otherwise. Continue presenting your costs as you always have.


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Q. What is the rule for correct usage of “drive” and “ride”? I was trying to explain this difference to a non-English-speaking colleague, but it appears somewhat illogical on the basis of normal usage.

A. Sometimes new technologies force us into analogies. Perhaps people ride bicycles because they rode horses—particularly at the time bicycles first became popular. Likewise, one is said to ride a motorcycle—sometimes called a “steel horse”—more often than one is said to drive it. Cars, which tend not to resemble horses so much, are nonetheless said to marshal the power of multiple horses, and, just as one is said to drive a team of horses (as into a corral), one is said to drive a car. The distinction between drive and ride doesn’t seem consistently to depend on whether the driver or the rider provides any locomotion. There are better (worse?) examples of words that persist on the basis of analogy: how often do we dial a phone or ring up a sale anymore?


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Q. Since the late 1980s, when I got my first copy of CMS, I have understood that verbs associated with a noun used to group plural items should correspond with the singular, grouping noun. For example, “A growing number of reports has revealed . . .” Microsoft Word, however, keeps indicating a grammatical error when I follow this rule and was placated when I changed “has” to “have” in the above example. Can you please clarify who is right? Is it I or the copyeditors consulted by Bill Gates?

A. Microsoft’s grammar-checking software happens to be right in this case. Number as a collective noun takes a singular or plural verb depending on the article (definite the or indefinite a) that precedes it:

The number of pizzas ordered this year has doubled.

but

A number of studies have shown that stuffing a pizza with spinach triples the edibility of that sinewy vegetable.

Most collective nouns do tend to be invariably singular in American English. Those that, like number, vary according to circumstance include words like percentage and any fraction—one-third (or a third), one-half (or half), two-thirds, etc. Like number, these take a singular verb when preceded by the (common for percentage but rare for fractions). Otherwise, the verb agrees with the number of the noun in any prepositional phrase that follows:

After today’s enormously stressful workshop, a third of the attendees have decided to skip the entrée, preferring instead to dine on the wine.

but

Unfortunately, seven-eighths of last year’s vintage was spoiled.


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Q. In your last Q&A section where you addresssed the proper form for names of aircraft, such as the Spirit of St. Louis, the term “Air Force One” came up. This is NOT a proper name for an airplane; it is merely the radio call sign of whichever U.S. Air Force airplane has the president on board. Many airplanes have been used as Air Force One: Ike flew in Columbine; Nixon flew home to California in disgrace in the Spirit of ’76. In each case the radio call sign was “Air Force One.” It is appropriate to capitalize Air Force One (or similarly Marine One or—recently when President Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln—Navy One).

A. Fascinating! Thank you for taking the time to lend your expertise.

© 2004 by The University of Chicago.