Language is not static; it’s constantly evolving. Editors are communication professionals, so it’s my responsibility to stay abreast of the changes so that I can best serve my clients. Recently the AP Stylebook announced some updates, including shifting to Merriam-Webster, the same dictionary used by the Chicago Manual of Style. One of the main reasons for this is that Merriam-Webster is continually updated, so it’s more likely to include newly coined terms.
And the Chicago Manual of Style is being updated too. Russell Harper is the principal reviser of the new edition of CMOS, which includes updating the website. It’s a huge endeavor! The team at the University of Chicago Press are working hard to get it all done. They aim to release the hard copy and online versions at the same time.
If you subscribe to the easily searchable online version of CMOS, you’ll get access to the new edition as soon as it is online. But if you only work from the hard copy, you’ll need to buy the new one! And if you use the tie-in CMOS style sheet in PerfectIt, it will also be updated.
Personally, I think I’ll stick with online-only, mostly because it’s more efficient to use, but also because I’m not crazy about that bright yellow cover … But that’s just a matter of personal taste.
At the recent ACES conference, Harper shared some of the key updates:
No more place of publication
Place of publication is no longer obligatory in references. In fact, they’d prefer you not to mention them unless absolutely necessary.
Headline style is title case
Headline style is now called title case, to line up with uppercase and lowercase and avoid ambiguity with periodicals.
Capitalize some prepositions
In title case, capitalize prepositions of five letters or more.
Is this an arbitrary number? Sure, a little bit, but it helps editors make decisions more quickly. Harper went into more detail about where the “prepositions are lowercase” rule came from (the wild west of 1969). Lowercase can look pretty weird on the long ones, like within and through and according to. And then, decades later, websites like Wikipedia started capitalizing them at five letters or more.
This rule is easier to apply. It’s also consistent with how it is done “in the wild.” Apparently the debate around this change lasted months!
“The” in periodical titles
For periodicals that use The in their title or masthead, such as The New York Times, include the The in the cited title; that is, title case and italicize it. But sometimes syntax will get rid of it, for example “Is that the New York Times article you were talking about?” or “Is that a New York Times article?” And you could even drop the the entirely from citations and index entries for simplicity’s sake.
Harper (who helped make the CMOS 17 style sheet for PerfectIt) is working with PerfectIt on developing a list of periodicals to make this a little easier.
Some words that were capped in the past aren’t capped anymore:
French dressing but french fries.
What? Aha! This is where Merriam-Webster comes in: Follow their first listed choice, which is based on how most people are using it. The 18th edition of CMOS lists a bunch of similar usage discrepancies.
Caps after colons
Capitalize the first letter of the first word after a colon if it’s a grammatically complete sentence.
Hyphenation changes
The terms ebook and esports will join email as exceptions to the rule for hyphenating e-terms.
CMOS will clarify their rules relative to compound modifiers that follow a noun to allow for certain hyphenated exceptions.
For example, though a well-read student is well read (no change to the current rules), a first-rate editor will remain first-rate after the noun. CMOS will also clarify their rules for compound modifiers that may remain open before a noun, as the term guest room in guest room access.
En dashes are fun
When you see an en dash in a compound, you can tell it’s been professionally copyedited. We editors tend to care about fiddly distinctions like this.
Harper says, “Editors keep wanting more en dashes, but Chicago keeps pushing back and saying, ‘But readers don’t care.’”
He says that if it was up to him, the en dash rules would be a little more expansive.
One influential managing editor even floated the idea of getting rid of them entirely! But our little en dash friends have survived … for now.
After all, as Harper says, “En dashes are fun.”
Singular “they” in formal writing
The generic singular they will now be considered acceptable even in formal writing—for example, when the antecedent is an indefinite pronoun (someone forgot their coat) or when referring to a person whose gender is unknown or irrelevant (will the driver of the yellow sedan please move their car) or whose identity must be concealed (the author wants their privacy protected).
These generic uses complement the referential singular they, which was covered for the first time in the last edition relative to people who identify with they/them pronouns.
“That’s completely natural in conversation, and also, it makes a lot of sense,” says Harper. “What else would you put there? You know, we used to do his or her, but why go to the trouble to specify like that? Their—That’s what people are going to say. And often, what people say over and over again—they’re saying it that way because that’s the clearest way to do it. That’s the most efficient way to do it. This is how we understand each other.”
The Chicago ellipsis
The Chicago ellipsis (. . .) can be replaced by the horizontal ellipsis character (…) (2026+ALT X) to avoid the spaces growing in justified text displayed using HTML (like this paragraph), avoid making a bunch of nonbreaking thin spaces, or avoid a period going to the next line.
I have already set it up in my Word autotext.
Key takeaway
My biggest takeaway from watching that session was the insight into the thought processes behind how the manual works and how certain rules are decided. Harper explains that unlike the AP Stylebook, CMOS is not a dictionary; it’s a set of principles, and that’s why decisions like capitalizing words about identity such as Black or Indigenous, or using singular they, are discussed in terms of their semantics and grammar, and not decided on term by term.
But also, as usual, he emphasized that CMOS outlines the Chicago Press’s preferences. They’re not laws or diktats. That’s also why CMOS plays so nicely with other styles.
For more information about these changes, and some hilarious asides, watch the full discussion on That Word Chat. You can also read more about it on the CMOS Shoptalk blog.
