Q. In the word-by-word alphabetizing example in CMOS 15.69, why are “New, Zoe” and “News, Networks, and the Arts” before “New Deal” and “news conference,” respectively? Thanks.

A. As explained there, in the text introducing a comparison of the two basic systems of alphabetization—letter by letter and word by word—a comma “interrupts” alphabetizing in both systems. This means that any words that follow a comma are ignored unless what comes before the comma is identical in two or more entries:

New, Arthur [alphabetized under “New”]

New, Zoe [also alphabetized under “New”; “Zoe” follows “Arthur”]

New Deal [alphabetized under “New Deal” (which follows “New”)]

news, lamentable [alphabetized under “news”]

News, Networks, and the Arts [also alphabetized under “News”; “Networks” follows “lamentable”]

news conference [alphabetized under “news conference” (which follows “news”)]

The order of the terms above would be the same in the letter-by-letter system. But in letter-by-letter order, a space between words is ignored. So, for example, “newborn” would come before the phrase “New Deal” in the letter-by-letter system (because “newb” comes before “New D”), whereas the opposite would be true in a list arranged word by word, in which alphabetizing stops after the first word in each entry (the word “New” comes before “newborn”). Note that Chicago now prefers the word-by-word system (as of the 18th edition; see CMOS 15.66).

Q. Why is ibid. preferable to id.? The meaning is essentially the same and id. is more succinct, and it is used extensively in legal citation without any apparent confusion or misunderstanding.

A. What you say is true. But because id. (idem, the same) is used mainly in legal citations whereas ibid. (ibidem, in the same place) has long been preferred in history and most other academic disciplines, ibid. is much more well known than id. Whether ibid. also benefits from not looking like id (the complement to the ego and superego) is anyone’s guess.

For more on ibid. and id. (including Chicago’s preference for shortened citations over either of those abbreviations), start with CMOS 13.38.

Q. When writing technical documentation, some steps may require a warning or information of note with the step. In those instances, the information begins either with “Warning:” or “Note:” (respectively). If the word before the colon is bolded, should the colon also be bolded?

A. In the scenario you describe, the colon belongs to the word it’s next to rather than to the words that follow. If the former is in a bold font—or in italics or a different color—then the colon would be styled to match:

Warning: Don’t press this button.

Note: Some buttons are more important than others.

See CMOS 6.2 and 6.3 for some additional considerations and examples.

Q. Hello! You have a Q&A where a speaker interrupts their own dialogue with an em dash, and your example uses a space before the new sentence: “I thought I might— Oh, it’s no use.” While I understand the logic of the space (the first sentence has ended suddenly; a new one starts), in practice, is there a justification for just closing up the spaces with all such em dashes for expediency and consistency, even if what follows is a complete sentence? Our global manuscript cleanup process would remove that space even if the author had written it in, and I am reluctant to have copyeditors spend time adding the space back in on a case-by-case basis, agonizing over whether the next clause merits a space and a cap (if it’s ambiguous), and so on. Is there room for a house style exception on this, or do you think that the space should be followed as a matter of Chicago style? Thank you for any help!

A. That space after the em dash in “might—” isn’t technically Chicago style; it’s not currently covered in CMOS itself (as of the 18th edition). But as our Q&A implies, we do think the space (followed by an initial capital) is useful—as does Benjamin Dreyer, the author of Dreyer’s English (Random House, 2019; see p. 124).

Still, it’s a small detail that isn’t likely to be missed if it’s not there in the first place. But if you do make an executive decision to clean out spaces after em dashes, consider changing the initial capitals that follow them to lowercase (except in proper nouns or initialisms or the like); absent that space, a capital may look to some readers like a mistake (though maybe less so in styles that put a space before and after a dash):

“I thought I might— Oh, it’s no use.”

becomes

“I thought I might—oh, it’s no use.”

not

“I thought I might—Oh, it’s no use.”

The first example is arguably best; it conveys the self-interruption more definitively than the others do. But if your editing resources are limited, this is one detail that, again, could be left on the cutting-room floor. Just be sure to alert your authors to what you’ve done when you return their copyedited manuscripts for review; they should get a chance to restore any spaces plus initial capitals that they think are mandatory.

Q. Should the indefinite article “a” be used when introducing a professor emeritus? For example, “He is [a] professor emeritus of chemistry at the university.” On the one hand, “a” usually indicates that the person is not the only person with that title at the university. On the other hand, Google Ngram shows a higher preference for no article.

A. We agree that adding “a” could make sense if there’s more than one such professor at the university in question. But whether there’s one or eleven, omitting the article makes “professor emeritus” sound more like a professional title than a job description. That is, it sounds fancier.

This may explain why it would be relatively rare to refer to someone as “teacher of” chemistry or another subject (without “a”), whereas calling someone “professor of”—even without “emeritus”—is fairly common (“She is professor of chemistry at . . .”). The word professor enjoys a status that teacher does not.

In other words, there’s no definitive answer to your question. Though adding an “a” or an “an” can work well before a title held by more than one person, omitting the article before “professor” and variations of that term even when there’s more than one can be an equally good choice, one that follows an unstated convention in academia.

Q. The 18th edition says to include “The” when part of an official periodical title. What about upper- or lowercasing “The” in organizations such as The Juilliard School or The Metropolitan Museum of Art? (I prefer lowercase, but they refer to themselves with “The.”)

A. Chicago’s new guidelines relative to an initial article in names like The New York Times do not extend to the names of organizations. The main reason behind this difference is that the names of organizations aren’t set off from the surrounding text by italics or quotation marks.

The occasional exception can be made on a case-by-case basis—like the exceptions made by Julliard and the Met when writing about themselves (or by the University of Chicago Press in its copyright lines, including at the foot of this page: “© 2024 by The University of Chicago”). But when you refer to organizations other than your own, there’s generally no obligation to capitalize an initial “the.”

Q. How would you cite a website home page in a bibliography? Would the page title be “Home Page” (in quotes) or just a descriptive “Home page” (no quotes)? Or the title of the website? Or something else entirely?

A. A home page is almost never titled “Home Page,” so a description is your best option (though you can leave that out if it’s obvious from the URL and the other information in your citation). Note also that a home page isn’t normally a source that you’d list in a bibliography; consider limiting your citation to a mention in either the text or a note (though we’ll show the form for a bibliography entry here).

Wherever you cite it, you should save a version of the page as it existed when you consulted it. Unlike a published article or other content that may be available from a home page, a home page itself is designed to change over time (i.e., as a site adds content or to keep up with new software, or both).

If it is important to share this version with your readers, use the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine or a similar service to create a public link and cite that version as follows:

University of Chicago Press (home page). Archived November 27, 2024. https://​web​.archive​.org​/web​/20241127140410​/https://​press​.uchicago​.edu​/index​.html.

That’s the page at https://press.uchicago.edu/index.html as it existed on November 27 at four minutes and ten seconds after two in the afternoon UTC (the string of numbers in the middle of the URL; that link points to the page as saved using the Wayback Machine’s Save Page Now feature). If you do not cite an archived version, you will need to include an access date. For more details and examples, see CMOS 14.104. For the meaning of UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), see 10.47.

Q. In text, I write: “. . . a book titled, ABC Book.” But should I use the word “titled” or “entitled” in front of the title? Also, should the title be preceded by a comma, as I’ve done here? I’ve always included the comma, but that may not be correct. Please help. Thanks!

A. Both titled and entitled are correct, and in this context they mean the same thing. Normally, you can use titled—that is, unless you’re feeling entitled (the other meaning of that word) to use the slightly fancier-sounding entitled.

But omit the comma before the book title. Many writers assume that a comma is needed before the title of any book or other work mentioned mid-sentence, probably because the words in italics or quotation marks resemble quoted writing or speech. In other words, titled (or entitled) is often treated (incorrectly) like said would be.

Instead, you should save your commas for direct quotations introduced like the one in the third example below (but not the fourth one; see also CMOS 12.14):

I just started writing a book titled ABC Book.

and

The first chapter is called “It’s Now or Never.”

but

My publisher said, “It’s now or never.”

or

My publisher said that “it’s now or never.”

Q. While The Chicago Manual of Style still supports a no-hyphen version of “up to date” when not before a noun, Merriam-Webster appears to support using hyphens in all cases. I am not sure which to advise my clients to use.

A. When Merriam-Webster and CMOS disagree relative to hyphenation, follow CMOS. Because CMOS says specifically that “up to date” remains open after a noun—an up-to-date solution but his equipment was up to date (see the hyphenation guide at CMOS 7.96, under “phrases, adjectival”)—that’s what you should advise.

Keep in mind that Chicago favors a spare hyphenation style. What this often means in practice is that any compound adjective that follows the noun it modifies (i.e., instead of directly preceding it) can usually be left open. There are only a few adjective phrases that retain hyphens in any position—among them all-consuming and high-spirited—as described in CMOS 7.92.

But those are exceptions. In general, documents that include relatively few hyphens in compound adjectives after a noun will be the ones that are the most up to date as far as Chicago style is concerned (up to and including the 18th edition).

Q. I’m proofreading a manuscript in which a lot of dialogue tags are followed with descriptive verb phrases. But instead of using gerunds to do this (“I like cats,” he said, smiling), the author opts nine times out of ten to use a conjunction (“I like cats,” he said and smiled). In most of these cases, my instinct is to put a comma after the dialogue tag, but I’m unable to find any CMOS rule that applies to this specific instance.

A. A comma in your second example isn’t strictly required; the word “and” introduces the second half of a compound predicate (“smiled”), which is easier to see if you reorganize your example and replace the quoted dialogue with an indefinite pronoun:

He said something and smiled.

But the transition from speaking verb (“said”) to action verb (“smiled”) in the original version of the example is a little abrupt, and we agree with your instinct that a comma after “said” would be helpful:

“I like cats,” he said, and smiled.

For a similar take on this issue, see Amy J. Schneider’s The Chicago Guide to Copyediting Fiction (University of Chicago Press, 2023), 163–64. See also CMOS 6.24 (on commas with compound predicates) and 12.41 (on punctuation with speaker tags).

Q. I’m proofreading a book that was previously published in the UK for forthcoming US publication. The hyphenation of “century” compounds using BCE/CE preceding a noun is inconsistent throughout. Examples: “A first-century-CE graffito from a wall in Pompeii”; “A second-century BCE satire.” My inclination, guided by CMOS 7.94 (on multiple hyphens), is to follow the second example, without a hyphen before BCE/CE, which is also how the UK edition was styled. I can’t seem to find any CMOS guidance that specifically addresses this issue, though. Is my inclination sound? Many thanks for any help.

A. We agree with your inclination, which also happens to be supported by Chicago’s recommendation to omit hyphens in compound modifiers consisting of a number plus an abbreviation, as in the 33 m distance (see CMOS 7.96, sec. 1, under “number + abbreviation”). That example isn’t perfectly analogous to a first-century CE graffito, but it’s close enough.

Q. Regarding professional titles (e.g., “chef”) that appear before a person’s name in running copy, it’s not clear when such titles should be initial capped. In CMOS 8.20, Chicago indicates that “professional titles are capitalized when they immediately precede a personal name and are thus used as part of the name (traditionally replacing the title holder’s first name).” But in 8.31, Chicago writes, “When preceding a name, generic titles that describe a person’s role or occupation—such as philosopher or historian—are normally lowercased.” So my question is, Do you have any guidance for distinguishing between a “professional title” and “generic titles that describe a person’s role or occupation”? It would seem that this is a contradiction in Chicago, but perhaps I’m missing something? Any input on this issue would be greatly appreciated!

A. The difference between a professional title and a job description won’t always be crystal clear. If you’re unsure about a particular term not covered in CMOS, try looking up usage for someone famous and using that as your model.

For example, would you refer to “Chef Julia Child,” with a capital C in Chef, and by extension to “Chef Child”? This n-gram from Google Books suggests that this choice would be an outlier. And it’s not how Child and other professional chefs are referred to in the book Appetite for Life, the authorized biography of Child by Noël Riley Fitch (Anchor Books, 1999). Instead, modeling the usage in that book—which refers, for example, to “the teaching of chef Pierre Mangelotte” (181)—you’d refer to chef Julia Child or to Julia Child, the chef (but never to “Chef Child”).

Still, if you wanted to call a particular character “Chef Smith” in a novel or story, that could work well, assuming that’s how the character would be addressed by others (in the manner of a doctor or a coach; see CMOS 8.37). And there may be some real-life chefs who insist on the same—as well as some books that apply the initial capital. But lowercase for chef seems like the more appropriate choice in most cases.

Words for other types of jobs can be investigated in the same way. If your efforts fail to yield a clear choice, go with lowercase.

[Editor’s update: As one of our readers has pointed out to us, Julia Child may often be referred to as a chef, but she was not a chef in the strictest sense of that term, in which a chef is someone who has run a kitchen in a restaurant or similar organization. Such a professional would include, for example, the chef José Andrés, who is often referred to as Chef José Andrés or Chef Andrés, where “Chef” is considered to be his title. Our advice above should have included this distinction.]

Q. In the headline “Rack ’em Up and Play,” would Chicago support ’em or ’Em? (It’s for an article about a billiards-themed mobile game. We follow Chicago, so our headlines are always in title case. And we have a casual style, hence the contraction.) I’m consumed by indecision. On the one hand, ’Em is technically a pronoun, standing in for Them, and pronouns regardless of length are capitalized in headlines. On the other, I get stuck on the fact that the initial letter of the full word is what would be capitalized, and that initial letter is removed by the contraction. No initial letter, no capital? Aesthetically the lowercase option looks better to me, but other colleagues have said lowercase looks like a mistake to them. Help!

A. Our vote would be to apply an initial capital: Rack ’Em Up and Play. The similar contraction ’twas is usually written ’Twas at the beginning of a sentence (as in the opening line of that famous nineteenth-century American poem: ’Twas the night before Christmas . . .), even though the T in ’Twas would be lowercase if the contraction were to be spelled out (It was . . .). In other words, there’s at least one well-known precedent for ignoring an initial apostrophe for the purposes of capitalization.

Q. How should one cite a published book that is in an archival (personal papers) collection? The most important element of the book is not the text but the annotations added by the person whose collection the book is in. Thanks!

A. Cite the book like any other book; then cite the archive according to the advice and examples in CMOS 14.119–29, prefacing this information with “in” if it immediately follows the book citation (cf. CMOS 13.25).

The goal is to make it clear which book you’re citing and where the copy that has the annotations can be found. The annotations themselves can be discussed anywhere—in your text, in your notes, or in an addendum to a bibliography entry for the book (see CMOS 13.68, item 3)—and you can cite specific page numbers where applicable. But the annotations wouldn’t be cited as a separate entity.