In which I am a big dork, as usual
Jul. 19th, 2014 01:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodygranuaileAt my fancy new freelance gig there is often some downtime between jobs, which, after having examined all of the house style guides multiple times, I decided to use to review the CMoS, since I haven’t actually had to use it in a while. And that, dear reader, is how I ended up reading the entire Chicago Manual of Style, Fifteenth Edition, by the University of Chicago Press, cover to cover. (Yes, I know that’s not how style guides are mean to be read.) (And yes, I know there are sixteen editions, but the office doesn’t have the sixteenth.)
Some of it, it must be confessed, was rather dull, although I suppose this is to be expected, as style manuals are not really intended to be light adventure reading. Other bits were surprisingly entertaining, as Chicago’s editors occasionally have snarky opinions about certain misuses, particularly hypercorrections. But neither of these is all that important. What is important, and what I am pleased to report, is that the CMoS 15 is extremely well organized and eminently easy to read, discussing style issues in clear, plain language, in detail, and with plenty of illustrative examples. It also defines all the language and publishing jargon that it uses.
As someone who has been in editorial services for a few years now, I read this to “refresh my memory”—and refresh it I did, not just about Chicago’s particular style conventions but also about a lot of writing and publishing stuff that I had once known but grown a bit fuzzy on, like the difference between a “font” and a “typeface” (I blame Microsoft Word for continually confusing me on that one). I am, however, somewhat embarrassed at the amount of stuff I straight-up learned, some of which was dorky etymology/history stuff (like about the use of Fraktur typefaces in German typesetting), but some of which was actual editorial things that I really ought to have known already (it seems “till” really is its own preposition that means the same things as “until,” not a shortened form with an extraneous L).
In multiple cases, particularly for things involving punctuation and capitalization, there are multiple “systems” of doing it correctly. In these cases, the CMoS quite usefully gives its preferred rules first, but also gives rundowns of the less preferred systems along with explanations of why they are less preferred but not wrong (dated, regional, etc.). This has already come in helpful when trying to disentangle copy that seems to have been written my multiple people using different styles, and when project managers have come to ask me about my edits, which has already happened twice.
The organization of the CMoS is beautifully sensible and easy to navigate. It starts off with some basic discussion of What Are Things That Need Editing, such as books vs. journals and some notes of manuscripts, different stages of proofs, etc. Then it gets into the nitty-gritty grammar and usage stuff, starting with basics like parts of speech and punctuation and progressively addressing more specialized topics, such as how to treat foreign publications and math. I was particularly interested in the chapters on names and foreign languages; it had me thinking about the panel I attended at Readercon lat weekend. The later parts of the book deal with special documentation and with indexes and appendixes (sadly, CMoS does not use the old-fashioned “indices” and “appendices,” which are my favorites). The two appendixes roughly delineate the common production processes in book and journal publishing, just to give the editor a better idea of their place in the system (and, presumably, so that one does not have to ask stupid questions at work).
One of these days I should acquire my own copy of the 16th edition, to see how they compare, and because as an editor I should really have a better collection of stylebooks than just the writing guides I have from Pearson, which are mostly MLA, anyway. If any mysterious wealthy benefactors are reading this, I have an Amazon wishlist. (I am also afraid of ponies, FYI.)
But for now, the real question is, do I spend my next bout of downtime reading the Associated Press 2009 Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law, or do I just start reading fiction at my desk?
Some of it, it must be confessed, was rather dull, although I suppose this is to be expected, as style manuals are not really intended to be light adventure reading. Other bits were surprisingly entertaining, as Chicago’s editors occasionally have snarky opinions about certain misuses, particularly hypercorrections. But neither of these is all that important. What is important, and what I am pleased to report, is that the CMoS 15 is extremely well organized and eminently easy to read, discussing style issues in clear, plain language, in detail, and with plenty of illustrative examples. It also defines all the language and publishing jargon that it uses.
As someone who has been in editorial services for a few years now, I read this to “refresh my memory”—and refresh it I did, not just about Chicago’s particular style conventions but also about a lot of writing and publishing stuff that I had once known but grown a bit fuzzy on, like the difference between a “font” and a “typeface” (I blame Microsoft Word for continually confusing me on that one). I am, however, somewhat embarrassed at the amount of stuff I straight-up learned, some of which was dorky etymology/history stuff (like about the use of Fraktur typefaces in German typesetting), but some of which was actual editorial things that I really ought to have known already (it seems “till” really is its own preposition that means the same things as “until,” not a shortened form with an extraneous L).
In multiple cases, particularly for things involving punctuation and capitalization, there are multiple “systems” of doing it correctly. In these cases, the CMoS quite usefully gives its preferred rules first, but also gives rundowns of the less preferred systems along with explanations of why they are less preferred but not wrong (dated, regional, etc.). This has already come in helpful when trying to disentangle copy that seems to have been written my multiple people using different styles, and when project managers have come to ask me about my edits, which has already happened twice.
The organization of the CMoS is beautifully sensible and easy to navigate. It starts off with some basic discussion of What Are Things That Need Editing, such as books vs. journals and some notes of manuscripts, different stages of proofs, etc. Then it gets into the nitty-gritty grammar and usage stuff, starting with basics like parts of speech and punctuation and progressively addressing more specialized topics, such as how to treat foreign publications and math. I was particularly interested in the chapters on names and foreign languages; it had me thinking about the panel I attended at Readercon lat weekend. The later parts of the book deal with special documentation and with indexes and appendixes (sadly, CMoS does not use the old-fashioned “indices” and “appendices,” which are my favorites). The two appendixes roughly delineate the common production processes in book and journal publishing, just to give the editor a better idea of their place in the system (and, presumably, so that one does not have to ask stupid questions at work).
One of these days I should acquire my own copy of the 16th edition, to see how they compare, and because as an editor I should really have a better collection of stylebooks than just the writing guides I have from Pearson, which are mostly MLA, anyway. If any mysterious wealthy benefactors are reading this, I have an Amazon wishlist. (I am also afraid of ponies, FYI.)
But for now, the real question is, do I spend my next bout of downtime reading the Associated Press 2009 Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law, or do I just start reading fiction at my desk?
