Talk:The Chicago Manual of Style

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the The Chicago Manual of Style article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

Chicago Low‑importance

	Chicago portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Chicago, which aims to improve all articles or pages related to Chicago or the Chicago metropolitan area.ChicagoWikipedia:WikiProject ChicagoTemplate:WikiProject ChicagoChicago articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Books: Reference works

	Books portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Books. To participate in the project, please visit its page, where you can join the project and discuss matters related to book articles. To use this banner, please refer to the documentation. To improve this article, please refer to the relevant guideline for the type of work.BooksWikipedia:WikiProject BooksTemplate:WikiProject BooksBook articles
	This article is supported by the Reference works task force.

Academic Journals

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Academic Journals, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Academic Journals on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Academic JournalsWikipedia:WikiProject Academic JournalsTemplate:WikiProject Academic JournalsAcademic Journal articles
See WikiProject Academic Journals' writing guide for tips on how to improve this article.

Tip: Anchors are case-sensitive in most browsers.

This article links to one or more target anchors that no longer exist.

[[Citation#Citation styles|citation style]] The anchor (#Citation styles) has been deleted.

Please help fix the broken anchors. You can remove this template after fixing the problems. | Reporting errors

Citation format examples

Why not give an example of this citation method but I suppose there are too many different kinds of citation to list here or something?--Fredmaack 09:40, 2 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I second the motion!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.232.126.123 (talk • contribs) 08:41, 4 May 2006

See http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html for some examples. There are also some examples on my user page (I copy, paste, and the edit the code from my user page when I add citations to articles). --Safalra 11:40, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

CMS is not obsolete

While CMS has far more competition than in the past, it is still alive and kicking. In the academic world, it's most prominent in historical journals - see the American Anthropological Association and the Organization of American Historians. It's also still widely cited as a general style guide; see Wikipedia's Manual of Style for example -Redguardian

"Criticism" section

This section doesn't make much sense as written. It seems to be referring to a method of citing other works, or something like that, but even that isn't clear. The CMS is an extremely comprehensive book, and you need to tell us what part of it you're talking about. Lou Sander 05:45, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I concur. I'm going to put a {{fact}} tag up for now. If we don't hear back from the original author of the material in that section -- who is probably gone, see Special:Contributions/Wokilemil -- we should probably just remove it. --Cultural Freedom talk 2006-07-01 07:23 (UTC)

The article cited in this section, "What’s in a Surname? The Effects of Surname Initials on Academic Success," does not mention/criticize Chicago Manual of Style, but rather argues that alphabetizing authors can be detrimental because some journals and indexes only list the first author followed by et. al.^[1] This is not an issue in the Chicago Manual of Style, which requires all authors to be listed in every citation. This is perhaps the reason the authors do not mention Chicago in their article. In fact, the article is published in a journal that uses Chicago style.^[2]. Since the critique in this section is not actually levied at Chicago Manual of Style, nor is it actually a problem in Chicago Manual of Style, I think it should be removed, or a clarification note added. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.164.209.158 (talk) 22:00, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

At prompting of a wikipedia editor, I have removed the criticism section because the only article cited neither mentioned nor critiques Chicago Manual of Style. The article does suggest that alphabetized citation systems may be detrimental to authors with names toward the end of the alphabet, however it states this is only true when bibliographies or indexes use et. al. This is not the case in Chicago Manual of Style, in which the full list of authors are always provided in the bibliography. This is perhaps why the authors do not critique Chicago Manual of Style in the article, which is itself written in the Chicago Manual of Style. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.164.209.158 (talk) 07:28, 9 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ https://web.stanford.edu/~leinav/pubs/JEP2006.pdf
^ https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/policies/sample-references All AEA journals use Chicago

isn't style more general that formating?

The current article states "Note that, in the field of publishing, style means punctuation, italicizing, bolding, capitalization, tables, and so forth; not prose style." Isn't that too restrictive? Don't style manuals actually say some things about wording, such as 'avoiding sexist language'? I won't change this myself, because I'm really not too familair with the subject. ike9898 21:16, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

True. And CMS goes on to discuss other publishing things (e.g., barcodes). —Ben FrantzDale 22:02, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Because it is definitely true that publishing deals with not just the physical formatting, grammar and punctuation, but also prose style, including things like clarity of prose, organization, gender-neutral language, flow, documentation, plagiarism, etc., I have edited out the following section.

       (Note that, in the field of publishing, style means punctuation, italicizing, 
        bolding, capitalization, tables, and so forth; not prose style.)

[Grrr...I know I'm signed in, but my signature isn't showing up. I'll try again. ]Cyg-nifier 14:21, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Reverted disam link back into article

Someone removed the disam link for Chicago (disambiguation) from this article. FYI, the disam page does link to Chicago Manual of Style, which is why I placed a cross-link to that disam. Normally if an article is specifically listed on the disambiguation page, a cross-reference is also provided in the article.

Hope that clears up why I put it in. If there's disagreement, though, feel free to discuss it here and go with the consensus (don't remove without discussing though, thanks). Dugwiki 14:53, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Listing The Chicago Manual of Style on Chicago (disambiguation) makes sense, because it is sometimes abbreviated to "Chicago". Linking to Chicago (disambiguation) here, however, makes no sense. 'Cross-referencing' of disambiguation pages isn't normal, and if it occurs, it's probably wrong. The purpose of disambiguation is to "resolve ambiguity"; there is no ambiguity in "The Chicago Manual of Style". Linking to Chicago (disambiguation) would be merited if "Chicago" redirected here, but it doesn't. There isn't a reasonable situation in which someone would arrive at this narrow page but be looking for the completely broad "Chicago". Here are examples analagous to this one where this 'cross-referencing' practice is rightly not used:

Isaac Newton, can be abbreviated to "Newton", yet Newton (disambiguation) is not linked there.
Revised Standard Version, can be abbreviated to "RSV", yet RSV (a disambiguation page) is not linked there.
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, can be abbreviated to "Episode II", yet Episode II (a disambiguation page) is not linked there. Punctured Bicycle 21:00, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

To follow up on the above comment, I double checked in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages) and Wikipedia:Disambiguation and I can't find anything specifically one way or another whether or when to include links to disam pages on articles. It doesn't say to ONLY link the main article to the disam, nor does it say to link ALL articles or almost all articles. So unfortunately I can't find any "official" style reference to use here.

Now that being said, I think there is reasonable justification for, in general, including a link to the disam page unless there's a good reason not to. It's possible, for example, for a user to reach a specific page using the Search function and accidentally going to the wrong page. For example, if you Search for "Chicago", you get a list of articles with "Chicago" in the title. The first one, (334) Chicago, is an asteroid named after the city. A user who clicks on that first link would go to the asteroid article, and probably want to go from there to a different Chicago article. The easiest way to get the user to the other articles in that case is to provide a link directly to the disam page, since it is better organized and easier for the user to understand than the previous search window (ie linking to the disam is simpler than using Back on the browser and going through articles one by one). A similar example would be if a user accidentally clicks on something in a disam page or other page that links to a specific article, but doesn't get the article he's expecting and wants to correct it, such as accidentally clicking on a link to this article from the disam page or somewhere else but actually wanting something different with a similar name.

Of course, I could be overlooking something here in terms of Wiki preferences for disam links. But where the purpose of the disam page is to get the user quickly to the page they actually want, it seems to me providing the link back to the disam in related pages would be the quickest route available. Let me know if I'm missing something in my analysis, though.Dugwiki 21:51, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Using your same rationale, we should link to the disambiguation pages Manual and Style. Someone might enter "manual" or "style" into the search bar, get confused, and click on The Chicago Manual of Style in error. We should accomodate their error by linking to Manual and Style at the top of the The Chicago Manual of Style. This is absurd. Yes ideally disambiguation should get users to the page they want as fast as possible. That doesn't mean we should go out of our way to accomodate every possible scenario we can think up, however outlandish they may be. Again, as WP:DISAMBIG states, disambiguation is for "resolving ambiguity" in page titles. "The Chicago Manual of Style" is about as unambiguous as a page title can get. Punctured Bicycle 23:16, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, my rationale included an additional criteria - namely that the article appears on the linked disambiguation page. Since the Chicago Manual of Style doesn't appear on the disam pages for "Manual" or "Style", it likewise wouldn't have a crosslink back to the disam page. So those examples don't apply here. And in this case, the Chicago Manual of Style IS commonly abbreviated simply as "Chicago", which is why it appears on the disam page in the first place.

In addition, I don't yet see the downside to including the link back to the Chicago disam page. What exactly is being lost or risked by including that link? Far as I can tell all it does is give users more potential information and a quicker way to get back to the appropriate disam page. Dugwiki 15:12, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How big are the chances that someone who is looking for Chicago, but not The Chicago Manual of Style, accidentally gets here? IMHO that's the only case where the otheruses introduction is useful. --Hhielscher 15:41, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's not that likely. Really there's two or three ways it could happen, but they're going to be rare. One is you visit the disam page and click on the wrong link by mistake. Another is you search for "Chicago" or something similar and click on a link to this article by mistake. A third way, which is probably not going to happen, would be to have an article that mentions both the CMoS and something else named "Chicago" and accidentally click the wrong internal link. Thus all of the scenarios I can think of off-hand are remote. On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any obvious harm in including the link, just in case someone actually wants to use it for either the above scenarios or curiosity or whatever other reason. So it's not clear to me yet why not including the link would be comparitively beneficial. Dugwiki 16:06, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So, by your own admission, doing this is only remotely useful. What is the harm in allowing things that are only remotely useful to stay in Wikipedia articles? If we allow them to stay, the encyclopedia becomes bloated and looks unprofessional. Remotely useful things are removed from Wikipedia for this reason all the time. You can create an article on your neighbor Fred Johnson and note that he has three cats and works at the post office. Really, the article's inclusion on Wikipedia harms no one, and in some rare instance someone may even find the information useful. But the reality is, your article will be on AfD soon and then deleted. We can add links like Chocolate and Starfruit to the See also section of Apple. They don't really harm anything, and some may even find that they satiate their curiosity. But those links will be removed soon. Punctured Bicycle 16:56, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On the other hand, this isn't related to the non-notable article policy. Fred Johnson's article in the example above would be removed as being non-notable, for example, not because of a "usefulness" criteria. Similarly, the links to "Chocolate" and "Starfruit" in your Apple example don't even remotely mention "Apple" anywhere in the article. In this case, however, you have a link back to a page that specifically links to the CMoS, and the reason is that CMoS is often referred to as "Chicago". So there is, in fact, relevancy to it being on the disam page, and therefore likewise some reason to include a link to it on the CMoS page. Thus neither of the hypothetical examples cited above would apply here. Dugwiki 17:11, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You aren't engaging my point. By your own admission, doing this is only remotely useful. What is the harm in allowing things that are only remotely useful to stay in Wikipedia articles? If we allow them to stay, the encyclopedia becomes bloated and looks unprofessional. Punctured Bicycle 17:20, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if your problem with this specific disam link is how it looks, if you think it looks unprofessional for example, then that could presumably be addressed by editing the text without removing the link. Claiming that the disam link "bloats" the encyclopedia, though, is hyperbole, especially where there is a rationale to the link. Dugwiki 17:28, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Although the specific disam link here is obviously pretty minor one way or another, the discussion above is actually pretty interesting in regards to disambiguation links in general. I think what I'll do is start a seperate discussion topic about disam links in general on the appropriate talk page, and leave this particular Chicago link up to you guys. If enough people want to remove the link, feel free. I've been looking at it from the more general question of when to include disam links in articles linked from disam pages. This is a case where the disam stems not from the name of the article, per se, but from what people informally call the actual guide.

So PB, you obviously feel most strongly about the link being there; if you and the other guys want to remove it, feel free. Dugwiki 18:04, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

missing citations template

This article (like any other in Wikipedia) requires citations (full citations) to reliable and verifiable sources; see WP:V, WP:V#Sources, WP:CITE (one should use Chicago style to illustrate, given this subject, I believe), and WP:EL. Do not embed external links in main text. Use a citations style (parenthetical citations and/or footnotes), keyed to the References list (just added); new references (books and articles) can be added to the References list. External links section must follow WP:EL; no redundancy between footnotes and external links section. Listing either as a footnote (full citation) or keyed to References list (bibliography). One cannot lift material from external sites and plop it into Wikipedia articles; quotation marks and citations to attribute sources of material are required. WP:ATTRIBUTION, though inactive, contains useful links to WP. See Plagiarism for what to avoid. Also, this is not supposed to be an advertisement for The Chicago Manual of Style; it is supposed to be an encyclopedia article about it; see WP:Advert (scroll down for info. re: the no advert template). --NYScholar 19:05, 12 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

unsupported statements in first paragraph

Unsourced and poorly reference claims for CMS. From the first paragraph: It is "one of the most widely used and respected style guides in the United States,"[1] This claim is only backed up by a dubious self-published source. Also from the first paragraph: is considered the de facto guide for American English style, grammar, and punctuation. While this may once have been true, the CMS has been losing authority for at least 50 years, as evidenced by the increasing popularity of MLA, APA, and AMA, styles. Also, why does the article read like it was written by the CMS marketing department? 17 January, 2012 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.129.148.154 (talk) 19:55, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How is it a self-published source? As to your other comments, they are reasonable observations, even if arguable. Please feel free to contribute to the article with reliable sources and suggest further changes here. --Airborne84 (talk) 20:14, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The last question of the IP is a reasonable one. Consider this:

An updated appendix on production and digital technology demystifies the process of electronic workflow and offers a primer on the use of XML markup, and a revised glossary includes a host of terms associated with electronic as well as print publishing. The Chicago system of documentation is streamlined to achieve greater consistency between the author-date and notes-bibliography systems of citation, making both systems easier to use. In addition, updated and expanded examples address the many questions that arise when documenting online and digital sources, from the use of DOIs to citing social networking sites. Figures and tables are updated throughout the book—including a return to the Manual’s popular hyphenation table and new, selective listings of Unicode numbers for special characters.

(My emphases.) Lots of praise implicit and even explicit in that. Maybe the praise is justified. But it shouldn't be here merely on the say-so of the publisher or of a WP editor. Instead, independent reviews saying this should be cited.

As for the IP's suggestion about sinking popularity, I have my own tart comments to make, but this isn't the place. Still, I've added the expert voice of Geoffrey K. Pullum to the article. -- Hoary (talk) 16:07, 12 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Added reference to a third party review of the CMOS to the second sentence of the first paragraph. The reviewer is supported the article statement that CMOS is a respected resource in publishing. -- TStep96 (talk) 14:11, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Usage

I came to this article to find which disciplines use CMS the most--is it more for humanities or sciences, etc.--but found nothing. Obviously I don't know so I cannot add any information to the page but I would appreciate if someone did. I believe that to be necessary. 76.124.116.124 (talk) 13:50, 29 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Highlighting

I find that the basic color highlights in the "Notes and Bibliography Style" section are hurting my eyes. If you need to use highlighting for clarity, using less offensive colors would be much better. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:302:D1BE:10C0:1CA3:90F1:457C:F613 (talk) 00:59, 24 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

For example, I think that the italics are enough to distinguish the journal title from other parts of the citation. Alfa-ketosav (talk) 19:52, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

[1] ttps://web.stanford.edu/~leinav/pubs/JEP2006.pdf

[2] ttps://www.aeaweb.org/journals/policies/sample-references All AEA journals use Chicago

[1]

[2]