The Chicago Manual of Style (Hardcover)

~ University of Chicago Press Staff (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Countless publishing professionals have learned the details of their business from this classic guide for publishers, editors and writers. It's updated every 10 years or so, and the 15th edition is the most extensive revision in decades. The Internet's influence is pervasive, with substantial sections on preparing manuscripts for electronic publishing, editing for online publications and citing electronic sources. The "Rights and Permissions" chapter is by attorney William S. Strong (The trace the publication process for books and journals, both print and electronic, from manuscript development to distribution and marketing. For the first time, the manual includes a chapter on grammar and usage, by Bryan A. Garner (A Dictionary of Modern Usage). Gone is the 13-page table showing when to hyphenate compound words of all sorts, but it's replaced by a six-plus-page list and a narrative overview, which will be simpler for the overworked manuscript editor ("copyeditor" has vanished, and the index relegates "copyediting" to a cross-reference to manuscript editing) to use. Traditionalists may be bothered by the new edition's preference for ZIP Code state abbreviations and dropping periods from such abbreviations as Ph.D. and even U.S. Some things do remain the same. The style guide still endorses the serial comma (which PW does not) and numerals are still spelled out from one through one hundred and at the beginning of a sentence. Those in the publishing industry will need this edition, both for what's new and for what they will want to argue about.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

The Chicago Manual of Style maintains its vitality by adapting to its ever-changing environment. None of the changes from one edition to the next are capricious; that which remains vital carries over, and that which must change, changes.

From the 1906 first edition's limited focus as "a compilation of typographical rules" for books, it has evolved to provide guidance to authors and editors working in other forms and media such as journals, newsletters, Web sites, and even, with the fifteenth edition, American Sign Language. The editors now "assume throughout that most writers and editors, whether preparing print or nonprint works, use computer software." That assumption is most visible in the chapter dealing with presentation in type of mathematical expressions and formulas. Software has collapsed the division of labor between author and typesetter, giving the author the power to fulfill both roles simultaneously. Mathematicians have faced that special challenge; all scholars have been vexed by uncertainty about citing electronic resources.

Various specialized manuals from other publishers have attempted to codify practices for citing electronic publications, but none has enjoyed the authority Chicago has earned over nearly a century. The fifteenth offers deeper guidance for citing electronic books, articles in e-journals, electronic editions of older works, and online newspapers and magazines. The clear, practical, and easily applied rules for citing these sources recognize the problem an author must solve when a URL is subject to change; they also offer advice on matters such as when to provide the date a cited e-work was accessed. U.S. copyright law, driven by the same technologies the fifteenth edition addresses, has also experienced significant changes. An expanded section on copyright offers clear albeit not exhaustive coverage of the current complexities of copyright. All authors would do well to study this primer.

Chicago's mantra throughout is consistency in support of clarity. Helping authors and editors achieve consistency in practice when creating or editing a manuscript and presenting it to readers is Chicago's raison d'etre. The prescriptive tone of some entries serves consistency, but usage is determined by users of the language. Chicago acknowledges variants in practice, often noting that an author may use a variant even though its entry first describes preferred practice. Bowing to popular influence, the editors concede that they "no longer urge deletion of the d in 2nd or the r in 3rd" and they "now recommend the month-day-year form of dates" prevalent in the U.S. The editors also have the wisdom and the experience to uphold rules that, if ignored, can create confusion in readers' minds. All of the rules and recommendations are easily accessible through the thorough index, a hallmark of every recent edition.

New to the fifteenth is a lively chapter on grammar and usage contributed by Bryan A. Garner, author of Garner's Modern American Usage (2d ed., Oxford, 2003; formerly A Dictionary of Modern American Usage). Its first part reviews basic rules of English grammar, and the second offers succinct explanations of words easily misused (decimate, precondition) or confused (e.g., healthy and healthful; purposely and purposefully). Added features discuss bias-free language and prepositional idioms.

Evolution is never a lockstep uniform process. Although the heart of Chicago embraces changes wrought by digital publishing, its concluding bibliography lags. Only the print editions of general-purpose encyclopedias and several English-language dictionaries are noted. Even though the entry for the Oxford English Dictionary indicates its availability on CD-ROM, it neglects to mention its online incarnation. But one must not miss the forest for these few trees. As it has done again and again, Chicago offers sensible, clearly articulated, and defensible advice to authors and editors who want to do their best to present an author's text to readers. Every library that serves authors, especially those producing scholarly works, simply must have the current edition of chicago. RBB
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 984 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 15th edition (August 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226104036
• ISBN-13: 978-0226104034
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (119 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #669 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

194 of 206 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still a classic, July 25, 2003

By	Jonathan E. Bruner (Chicago) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The Chicago Manual of Style has always been a steady companion. It discusses every imaginable style question to the point of exhaustion and speaks with the authority of the nation's largest academic press and the country's most academically serious university. The University of Chicago Press is not burdened by the scholarly dubiousness that plagues the MLA, which happens to publish a competing style guide.

This edition of the Manual of Style includes a number of improvements and additions. The Chicago manual has finally spoken on citing electronic publications, and even includes advice on assembling manuscripts for electronic journals. Flow charts in the back give broad overviews of the publishing process. The index seems easier to use than the index in the last edition, and the chapters are arranged more thoughtfully. Most striking upon first picking up the 15th edition is its stunning graphic design--not only is it beautiful, but it helps readability by highlighting examples and making sections easier to find. The manual includes some information on editing foreign-language publications. As always, the manual includes some very subtle humor in its sentence structure, verbiage, and choice of examples.

The Chicago Manual of Style is also equiped to be an arbiter of many a college dining hall argument on language, with extensive chapters on grammar and usage.

I heartily recommend the Chicago Manual of Style to anyone who ever finds himself with a question on some detail of English style.

44 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very fine resource, May 18, 2004

By	sadhana444 "sadhana444" (Anchorage, AK United States) - See all my reviews

The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) is without question my favorite style manual. The fact that this manual is one of the best of its kind does not seem to be in question for most people. What does seem to be in question is whether or not the CMOS is a fit for an individual's needs. What also seems to be in question is whether or not the 15th edition is an improvement from the 14th edition.

In terms of fit, I would say that the CMOS is probably a good fit for advanced writers, editors, and publishers; however, most of these advanced professionals already know this. College students might be better served by a style manual specific to their discipline - for example, The Modern Language Association (MLA) Handbook for English students, or the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) for psychology students. Beginning students might also be better served by a general handbook (such as The Little, Brown Handbook or The Holt Handbook). For office workers, administrative assistants, and secretaries, a better fit might be "The Gregg Reference Manual," which has an emphasis on business correspondence. In each of these cases; however, the CMOS would be a useful backup reference.

In regard to the editions, my overall opinion is that the 15th edition is a significant improvement in content to the 14th, and well worth the purchase. The 13th edition was published in 1982, the 14th in 1993, and this 15th in 2003, so the CMOS is updated approximately every 10 years, which feels like a good revision pace to me. The content revisions are summarized on the back cover, and I'll list them at the end of this review.

In addition to content, the layout of the new edition is also revised. There is a bit of risk and daring in using a light blue font to distinguish examples within paragraphs, and in using a new font for numbering. The light blue text is a bit hard to read at times, but for the main, it seems to add clarity. The daring numbering font is a bit less clear than the last edition, but probably only a keen font connoisseur would even notice.

Content revisions:

- Updated Materials throughout to reflect current style, technology, and professional practice

- New coverage of journals and electronic publications

- Comprehensive new chapter on American English grammar and usage by Bryan A. Garner (author of A Dictionary of Modern American Usage)

- Updated and rewritten chapter on preparing mathematical copy

- Reorganized and updated chapters on documentation, including guidance on citing electronic sources

- Streamlined coverage of current design and production processes, with a glossary of key terms

- New diagrams of the editing and production process4es for both books and journals, keyed to chapter discussions

- Descriptive headings on all numbered paragraphs for ease of reference

- New expanded Web site with special tools and features for Manual users - www.chicagomanualofstyle.org

84 of 92 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars CHICAGOS 15thA BIG DISAPPOINTMENT, March 5, 2004

By	LeRoy Johnson "[e-mail]" (Bishop, California United States) - See all my reviews

Because of the size of the print used in the 15th edition, I could not read the text so I rushed downtown (14 miles one way) and bought a stronger pair of reading spectacles. With the new glasses, I noted strange looking numbers announcing each paragraph. Paragraphs 1.33 and 3.11 looked as though they were set by an inebriated typesetter. The "one" numerals in both paragraphs appeared to be superscripted.

My curiosity led me to the colophon where I learned the manual is set with Scala and Scala Sans fonts. I used my favorite search engine and discovered these fonts were "invented" in 1999. I also discovered numerals 1, 2, and 0 are diminutive and the remainder are mega size and numerals 6 and 8 are superscripted. Mystery solved: The Chicago Press did not have an inebriated type setter.

Even with my more powerful spectacles, I still had trouble reading the text. I used my microscope and measured the capital letters in the 14th edition; they are 0.2 millimeters taller than the Scala capitals. This seems trivial, but it is not (particularly for older writers and editors). More bothersome than the small type size is the bluish type found in chapter 5. At first I thought there were sections of the text missing. All the text within the curly brackets is printed with barely discernable blue ink, which is virtually invisible under certain artificial light conditions. On page 148, note 5, we are told the curly brackets were used to save space. I don't have the Scala on my Mac but I tested several commonly used fonts and discovered words and phrases enclosed in square brackets use less space!

On the plus side Chicago has seen the light and dumped a couple of their old, long-standing edicts that made little or no sense. They now recommend the month-day-year method of recording dates (p. xii & 6.46); I was elated to find this change. I reasoned some of the curmudgeons who had ruled Chicago for eons retired and vanished from the scene-I was wrong. In paragraphs 17.186 and 17.225, Chicago recommends using the day-month-year system when there is a string of dates because it supposedly eliminates or reduces clutter. I was wrong again; there are still curmudgeons on the staff who won't totally abandon the military day-month-year rule.

I then went to the inclusive numbers paragraphs and was momentarily delighted to read "a foolproof system is to give the full form of numbers everywhere" (9.65). Then I looked at the preceding paragraph and was disheartened to learn Chicago does not like the foolproof system. Instead of 101-108 (the foolproof method) they want us to use 101-8 (presumably there are lots of fools who need placating).

Chapters 16 and 17 go on ad nauseam explaining how identical citation entries are handled differently in notes, bibliographies, or in reference lists (16.8-16.120 and 17.3-17.264). My wife and I have chaired several Death Valley historical conferences; she edits and prepares the camera ready text for the proceedings. Our instruction to the authors is simple: "We see no need to use different styles of literature citations in references and notes. Therefore, use the same literature citation format in your notes as used in references," which is the author-date system.

Scrutinizing the literature citation examples in the15th edition (e.g., 17.25-17.179), it is difficult to discern some of the subtle differences demanded by Chicago. The only way I could find them was to use a magnifying glass along with my more powerful reading glasses. Life, for authors, would be much simpler if Chicago would eliminate the frustrating nuances of the three systems and adopt the author-date system for notes, bibliographies, and literature citations.

In Chicago's discussion as to when to use the word "percent" or the "%" symbol we are told "in humanistic copy the word percent is used ... [but, presumably, for we non-humanistic scientists] the symbol % is more appropriate" (9.19). As long as I am on trivia, here's another one: Paragraph 17.169 lays down the rules for making the momentous decision as to when you leave a space following a colon. There's a rule for the space and one against the space. Wouldn't it be easier to simply say: A space always follows a colon or no space following the colon if followed by a number. Unquestionably this would be simpler but it wouldn't provide nits for an editor to pick.

Chicago now disallows op. cit. (opere citato: in the work previously cited) (16.50). The careless use of this helpful term is ubiquitous in the historical books I read. I've wasted many hours canvassing the previous notes in a book frantically attempting to track down, for example, "Wheat, op. cit. p. 47." When something is broken, fix it. The op. cit. "break" is easy to repair and here is how: Wheat, op. cit. [n. 3] p. 47. This immediately refers you back to the original note 3 where Wheat was first cited and tells you the author is now citing something on page 47 from Wheat's work.

The 14th edition, with its legible text has 921 pages and the barely readable 15th edition has 966 pages. Chicago added an excellent Grammar and Usage chapter, which consumed 92 pages. This chapter is a valuable addition to the tome.

It is now obvious Chicago will have to dump some sections if a readable 16th edition ever rolls off the press. Chicago could, as they did in the 15th edition, reduce the size of the font (heaven forbid!). If they do this, they'll have to supply a magnifying glass with each book.

A far better suggestion would be to whack away at the superfluous text with Occam's Razor and eliminate their insistence on having different standards for notes, references, and bibliographies. If they adopted the author-date system, widely used in the scientific community, the razor could trim a couple hundred pages of trivia. They then could go back to a readable font size.