Commas, like the two in this sentence, often come in pairs. When they do, they’re usually acting like miniature parentheses. In fact, whenever you’re tempted to omit the second of two commas, convert them both to parentheses; if your text still works as intended, keep that second comma.
Rebel with a Clause follows the adventures of Ellen’s Grammar Table and will have its New York City premiere on March 4 at the SVA Theatre in Manhattan. A book with the same title was published in 2022.
As many of you know by now, the 18th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style was published last September. To find out what’s new, you can check out “What’s New in the 18th Edition?” But now there’s an even better way to learn what’s new—by taking our quizzes.
A little more than three years ago, we introduced The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt, the proofreading software that works with Microsoft Word. That initial release was based on the 17th edition of the Manual, and it wasn’t too long before the teams at Chicago and PerfectIt began working on an update that would coincide with the publication of the 18th.
The convention of hyphenating a compound modifier before a noun but not after—as in a well-known author versus an author who is well known—has been Chicago style since the first edition (published in 1906).
Anyone who’s familiar with contemporary English-language novels would have little trouble reading a novel published in the 1700s in an original edition. By the middle of that century, conventions related to printed text and punctuation were starting to look almost modern.
As we announced back in April, the 18th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style will be published in September. That’s the official publication month for the printed book, and copies have already started rolling off the presses. But if you subscribe to CMOS Online, you don’t have to wait any longer.
Have you heard the news? The 18th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style will be published in September! And . . . it’s YELLOW! It may seem hard to believe, but it’s been seven years since we published the 17th edition.
Most readers know that hyphens connect groups of words or numbers whereas dashes set things off. But from there it tends to get a little fuzzy. For example, which key do you press to get the dash? Is there more than one kind of dash? . . . What about minus signs?
Most writers and editors know that it’s OK to (occasionally and judiciously) split an infinitive. We also know that, barring a more graceful alternative, a sentence-ending preposition is nothing to get upset about.
Chatbots are designed to analyze reams of text and then, based on that analysis, generate a sequence of words that would be statistically likely to correspond to a specific prompt. They can answer questions, write new copy, and revise or edit an existing text.
We’re back with another Halloween quiz—this time with a dash of Chicago style sprinkled on top of the trivia. Whether you celebrate this DIY holiday or not, we hope you’ll find something here to satisfy your craving for editorial arcana.
One of the main reasons to insert a hyphen between two words that aren’t normally hyphenated is to help readers sort out the text when those words are used as a compound modifier before a noun.
How well do you know the history of The Chicago Manual of Style, otherwise known as CMOS? This quiz is designed to give you a brief overview of the long history of the Manual (see question 2 for how long)—and of Chicago style.
Even writers and editors who work with nontechnical documents will encounter the occasional abbreviated unit of measure or other abbreviation from the sciences. Knowing some basic conventions about such expressions will help you spot potential errors.
