The Chicago Manual of Style

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.


An Essential Guide   September 12, 2003
 76 out of 85 found this review helpful

If you work with words, this is the reference book you must own. Updated approximately once a decade, the 15th edition is the most significant revision I can remember.

Publishing has changed dramatically and the Manual has changed with it. The editors promise that every aspect of their coverage has been examined and updated. In addition to books, the Manual also provides guidelines for journals and electronic publications.

There is a new chapter on American Grammar usage and usage. Design and manufacturing coverage has been streamlined to reflect current procedures.

A major improvement is the adding of descriptive headings to each numbered paragraph. This results in the Manual easier to search.

If you are looking for clear, concise advice, the 15th edition is reference stylebook you must own.


Sorry, it's the editor in me   September 24, 2003
 66 out of 89 found this review helpful

Well, the spine type on the copy I bought is right-side up. But what's with the '40s typeface on said spine?

Sloppy printing job! And the grid was not thought out carefully; the pages do not back properly. [Tip to newbie book designers: Check your margin and gutter settings on your master pages.]

Am I picky? You bet. How am I supposed to use this as a training tool? This is THE style bible for books, so it should be a shining example in itself. It seems as though the attention to design and typesetting issues is dwindling away with each revision. I can't claim to have read the new edition in its entirety, so perhaps much of that information has been assimilated into other chapters. My experience is that a designer who is new to books is not going to read the entire manual to find the finer points about specifications and composition.

By the way, I save my old versions to look up style examples not covered in the newest edition. And I still use my old WIT for help with grammatical constructions that Chicago doesn't cover.


Design disaster   January 13, 2004
 56 out of 63 found this review helpful

Aesthetics supersedes practicality in most matters of my life, but there are times when you just want to USE something. As an editor, I want my reference books to decrease my work time, not add to it. I admit I haven't discovered a plethora of new style info simply because the style of the book itself precludes my perusal of it.

Chicago 15 is a big, beautiful disaster. Whoever designed it should be forced to use it -- after reading manuscripts every day, all day, all year -- as punishment. What were they thinking when they chose the typestyles and font sizes, especially for the reference numbers? Perhaps it was obvious we would just disregard this book and stick with our 14th editions anyway, so the designers thumbed their noses at us and decided to just make it pretty (which it is).

Must I mention the barely legible pale blue print? An attempt at setting apart the examples is laudable, though unnecessary (Is that not what the braces are for? I was always taught that ONE form of distinction is enough), but the chosen color is insulting to those of us who actually read for a living.

As an artist, I love the fonts and design. As an editor, I hate this book -- and I have no use for it as an artist. The best thing about this book is that no one wants to use it, so I'm not forced to either. None of the NYC book publishers I edit for have abandoned the 14th (although we all readily switched over to Webster's 11th). The second-best thing about this book is that I still have the 14th edition and WIT to turn to. The third-best thing is that at least the business expense is tax-deductible.


CHICAGOyS 15thyA BIG DISAPPOINTMENT   March 5, 2004
 52 out of 57 found this review helpful

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.