Q. I am copyediting a nonfiction manuscript that contains citations of online news articles. We are hoping to use footnotes rather than endnotes for this book, and the URLs are very long and ungainly. The author’s proposed solution is to include only the web address for the news site’s home page and not the full article URL. I think it would be better to use a service to shorten these so that we can list a (currently) working URL for each specific article without taking up two or three lines of space for each one. Do you have any opinions on whether this is a sound practice or have any other suggestions for this kind of problem?
A. The author’s solution is preferable to URLs shortened by a third-party service, which aren’t always reliable or lasting. Please see CMOS 14.10 for detailed advice about shortening URLs. You might be able to clean up the complex URLs for individual articles by lopping off most of the gobbledygook. (Try it!) Or navigate to the page some other way and see whether the URL is tidier than the one provided.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. In running text, what is the proper way to write out a URL—with the www or without?
A. Please see CMOS 8.191 (“Titles of Websites and Web Pages”):
Many websites either do not have a formal title or do not have a title that distinguishes it as a website. These can usually be identified according to the entity responsible for the site along with a description of the site and, in some cases, a short form of the URL. For example, http://www.apple.com/ might be referred to in running text as Apple.com.
Browsing in the Manual, you might also notice that in running text we have chosen to include the entire protocol, beginning with http (CMOS 6.8, 7.46, etc.).
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. An online course I am building has many references to external websites. How should these be presented? I have been told to use both the name of the website and the URL but neither one should be hyperlinked. This sounds a little weird to me. Is there an official “right” way to do this?
A. There is no official right way to do this. Sometimes URLs are spelled out online because the material is meant to be printed out—perhaps by teachers, to hand out in class—and the readers won’t necessarily have access to the internet while they’re reading. Sometimes URLs are spelled out because they serve as examples (such as at our website) and aren’t meant to be accessed. Try to find out the purpose of the material you’re working with. If it’s purely online content, then you might point out that using URLs instead of links is going to look amateurish.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Have you established any rules for breaking web addresses at ends of lines? I would be inclined to break at the slash where possible, with no hyphen (keeping the address intact), but what about the “dots”? Example: eic.edu.gov.on.ca/html/dsbmaps.html (I’ve got another one that’s a line and a quarter long!).
A. We recommend breaking before a period and most other marks of punctuation—including a slash (but not a double slash; always break after “http://”). This helps make it clear that the URL has not come to an end. And yes, never add a hyphen to break a URL. For more detailed information, including examples, see CMOS 14.18.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Should a sentence that ends with a website address end with a period that is not part of the address? I am concerned that people who are not familiar with how URLs work might have trouble finding a site if they assume that the final period is part of the address. I have the same concern about putting a web address in quotation marks. Have you found any effective way of making sure people will be able to tell website addresses from surrounding punctuation?
A. We have embraced the view that punctuation marks following a URL will be readily enough perceived as belonging to the surrounding text. We do not recommend setting off a URL with angle brackets, which we allowed in the past; for one thing, angle brackets are used in some markup languages (see CMOS 14.17).
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. In a story where the last text provides an URL, website, or email address, should it not have a period at the end? I find sometimes clicking on the URL it does not take one directly to the displayed location if a period follows.
A. Yes, you must put a period at the end of a sentence, even if the sentence ends with a URL (or email address). If it’s essential that the link be clickable, make sure that the code that determines the hyperlink destination does not include the final period. (Most word-processing programs allow you to edit hyperlinks, even if they’ve been created automatically.) If you don’t have that option, then consider moving the URL so that it doesn’t fall at the end of a sentence or anywhere else that punctuation might be required.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. If a website breaks at the end of a line in type where a period occurs, does the period belong at the end of the line or at the beginning of the next line?
A. It’s better to put it at the beginning of the new line. If you put it at the end of a line, the reader might mistake it for a period and stumble when the next line doesn’t begin a new sentence. For more on URLs and line breaks, see CMOS 14.18.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Dear Q&A, We are an undergraduate academic library where students access most of the articles they cite from online databases such as EBSCO HOST Academic Search Premier. Our faculty would like to know how you would suggest citing articles from this source, as the URLs on these databases are not persistent. Thank you.
A. Cite the source as you normally would, then add the name of the database. Some databases recommend a stable URL that you should use instead. Most databases, including those hosted by EBSCO, include this information along with the items in their archives. For more information, start with CMOS 14.11.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. An article in the Washington Post (“On the Web, Research Work Proves Ephemeral,” by Rick Weiss, November 24, 2003) reports that URLs often become obsolete. It also says that there are lots of errors even in citations to conventional sources. What’s a researcher to do?
A. It is important to remember that the typical URL (uniform, or universal, resource locator) is essentially an address—something less than a permanent identifier for a source—and, like the Dewey decimal classification number on a book that sits on a library shelf, its primary function is to tell you where an item is, not what it is. A URL should never be the sole component in a citation: always include information such as author, title, and publication date to the extent these can be determined. The Post article cited above, for example, will continue to be findable from its title, author, and publication date—through a library database or a search engine—long after a particular URL for the source is dead. For less formally published sources, save or print out a copy of the source for your files. As for errors, authors and researchers should transcribe source information and include all the required elements as if there will be no opportunity to check for accuracy later. And if computers make some information ephemeral, they also help ensure that, for example, a typo in the volume number of a journal won’t provide an overwhelming obstacle to finding the article from the rest of the citation—or to checking the accuracy of the citation at manuscript stage. (See chapters 14 and 15 in CMOS for a full discussion of source citations, including information about how and when to incorporate URLs.)
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I noticed an article about CMOS that referred to this website address without the “www.” See University of Chicago Magazine, August 2003, page 40: “A New Web Site (chicagomanualofstyle.org) . . .” Is this okay?
A. Many URLs that include “www” have been designed to work without it; for example, paste “chicagomanualofstyle.org” into your address bar and you’ll automatically get redirected to “http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/” (followed, in this case, by “home.html”—the name of the home page document itself). This is not true for all addresses, however; ours, like many, has been programmed to do that. It is our recommendation, therefore, to include not only the full name of the domain server but also the protocol in any URL: for example, http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/ (note the final slash, which indicates a directory-level URL). This recommendation applies to scholarly writing and source citations. In journalism, it can be acceptable to abbreviate, especially in print. For a full discussion of URLs and related matters, see chapter 14 in CMOS.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]