Note for Editors on Sytle Authorities

[sr71plt]

For the first time in years, I've had a client specify using Turabian's (now titled A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations and mostly used for college writing) for a project. I had to go out and buy the new edition. In working with it, I note that it uses (in everything I've checked so far) Chicago Manual of Style style. Stands to reason; both are publishing by the Chicago University Press.

 

[AsylumSeeker]

For the first time in years, I've had a client specify using Turabian's (now titled A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations and mostly used for college writing) for a project. I had to go out and buy the new edition. In working with it, I note that it uses (in everything I've checked so far) Chicago Manual of Style style. Stands to reason; both are publishing by the Chicago University Press.

SR, you're playing Major League Baseball and in comparison I'm like a toddler struggling to learn T-ball. Thanks for the information, hoping editors like me are in the minority.

But I am a decent editor all the same. Just saying is all.

 

[estragon]

Chicago's Manual is Like USN&WR's College Rankings

or Robert Parker's wine scores. Relying on the Principle of Dogmatic Assertion, they loudly proclaim their own infallibility. And, of course, as that principle has so often demonstrated, people believe them.

 

[Scotsman69]

I personally recommend Scotsman's Manual of Style, but alas you can't borrow it. Tis all in my head. You can however obtain the excellent, and US-written, 'How Fiction Works', by James Wood, for not a lot. Highly recommended.

 

[sr71plt]

or Robert Parker's wine scores. Relying on the Principle of Dogmatic Assertion, they loudly proclaim their own infallibility. And, of course, as that principle has so often demonstrated, people believe them.

Have you actually read the Chicago Manual of Style? It's not at all dogmatic. It words most everything as a suggestion, often gives acceptable alternatives, and sometimes just avoids the sticky questions altogether. It's the publishers who treat it like the Bible--they prefer constants so that their product is uniform and they don't have to do a lot of yammering with each other and with authors over minutia.

At least in the world of publishing, if a publisher has to choose between author flightiness and the need for the reader to easily understand, they'll choose the reader every time (unless the author is one of their bread and butter treasures). It's the reader who is paying for the product.

 

[Great_Brit]

... Relying on the Principle of Dogmatic Assertion, they loudly proclaim their own infallibility. And, of course, as that principle has so often demonstrated, people believe them.

Another rather worldly-wise author said:

Sixty-four thousand repetitions make one truth.