Chicago Style Guide’s 18th Edition Shows How Language Evolves
If you’re writing a book, you should know The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) is the standard editorial guide in book publishing. All professional editors refer to it as they create a unique style sheet for each book that lists a publisher’s and author’s preferences (e.g., spell out “okay” or just use “OK”? Show possession as “Charles’ house” or “Charles’s house”? Put an author’s Acknowledgments page at the front of a book or at the back?).
On September 19, 2024, CMOS (pronounced “sea moss”) officially releases its 18th Edition with many updates and additions that reflect how language constantly evolves. For copyeditors like me, familiarizing myself with any changes related to grammar, punctuation, spelling, usage, and formatting is part of my job. For writers like you who rely on editors like me, keeping up with the latest changes to a large style book isn’t necessary. Still, I’d like to break down ten updates that might interest you as you self-edit your writing before sending it to a professional editor.
Aside from the obvious canary yellow book cover—previously blue—the 18th Edition of CMOS stands out for accepting modern-day communication and empathy:
For instance, if a person’s gender is “unknown, unspecified, or concealed for reasons of privacy,” CMOS now officially accepts the singular use of “they” as a pronoun to describe one person. For years, many of us have been using “they” instead of “him” or “her.” CMOS has taken an important step forward by formally endorsing the use of “they” as a nonbinary singular pronoun.
CMOS now capitalizes both “Indigenous” and “Black” when referring to people. Capitalizing “white,” however, is a judgment call. That means it depends on the content of a manuscript and whether the author and/or publisher decides to use “white woman” or “White woman”—then being consistent throughout the book.
Unlike AP Stylebook, which is more often used for magazines and newspapers, CMOS has never capitalized prepositions in titles before. Now the guide recommends capitalizing prepositions of five letters or more for titles written in title case—previously called “headline style.” For example, Much Ado About Nothing would have been Much Ado about Nothing in the 17th Edition, but A Room with a View stands because the preposition “with” is only four letters.
In the term “french fries,” “french” is no longer capitalized. In the case of “French dressing,” however, it is. Go figure!
Whereas “email” used to be “e-mail,” the hyphen is no longer necessary. Same goes for “ebook” and “esports,” which are both on the official list. Other “e” words are still hyphenated: e-bike, e-commerce, etc. (Exception: proper nouns like “eBay.”)
Apparently for sticklers of “correct” English language usage, “overly” was “frowned upon” before, but it’s now considered “unexceptional,” as in “I’m overly tired.”
When discussing the plural for giving students letter grades in school, instead of a parent boasting, “My daughter got all As!” CMOS now says, “My daughter got all A’s!”
You’ll be happy to learn you can now start a sentence with a numerical year without feeling bad about yourself, so go ahead and write, “1996 was a great year!” No need to reword the sentence to “The year 1996 was great.”
In citations, “ibid.” has been put out to pasture. This Latin word meaning “in the same place” used to be a quick way to say, “Check the last citation; this one is the same!” Now CMOS recommends providing a shortened citation in notes and bibliographies with the author’s last name, title of the work, and page number(s).
Believe it or not, CMOS now has guidance for emojis and their surrounding punctuation and spaces, as well as hashtags, for which capital letters are encouraged: #AmWriting instead of #amwriting. (It all comes down to clarity!) Also, the Bitcoin symbol (₿) has been added to the currency examples, whether you ever plan to purchase cryptocurrency or not.
If the 18th Edition of The Chicago Manual of Style indicates anything, the future is now, and the ways writers express themselves on the page can be malleable to fit the times while still sticking to a thoughtful set of rules governing book publishing. And if you’re ever unsure how to spell or hyphenate a word, look it up in the style guide’s first cousin: Merriam-Webster! You can’t go wrong there, as both Chicago and AP now rely on the same well-respected dictionary. (It’s about time!)