What is a Style Guide?
A style guide is a reference for writers, editors, proofreaders, and publishers. It’s a means of ensuring consistency with questions of grammar and style. It addresses decisions such as spelling, which words to capitalize, and how to use hyphens, apostrophes, and commas. It sets out the rules for whether headings should be bold, how much space between lines, and so forth.
Origins & Evolution of CMOS
CMOS began as the notes of typesetters transposing scientific papers written by University of Chicago professors. In 1891 those notes were published as a manual on rules for reference. Click here to view a facsimile copy of the first editing (Chicago Manual of Style Online). Since then CMOS has gone through seventeen editions (the most recent version was published in 2017).
The newest edition addresses some of the controversies of our current world: the transgender/nonbinary gender-neutral pronouns “they/their” are accepted in the singular for informal writing, and cis– has been added to the list of prefixes. Capitalization is not needed for “internet,” and “email” is no longer hyphenated (Publishers Weekly). The changes to the next edition will likely reflect additional changes along those lines.
What is Turabian Style?
Kate L. Turabian was the dissertation secretary at the University of Chicago from 1930 to 1958. She developed a style guide for researchers and graduate students closely based on CMOS, but tailored. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, AKA “Turabian Style,” is published and now revised & updated by the University of Chicago Press (see Turabian). She’s also the author of The Student’s Guide for Writing College Papers.
Praise & Criticism for CMOS
Reference books don’t reach the caliber of CMOS without considerable acclaim—and some criticism. If you’d like a sampling of this sort of discussion, skim through the Amazon and Goodreads reviews. Just being such a comprehensive tome is an accomplishment with challenges—there’s so much. This angle inspires a great deal of awe and respect. However, it’s often daunting for beginners. Many people are resistant to style guides in general but acknowledge that, as a style guide, it does what it’s supposed to do—provides a reference for what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. Others disagree with various aspects of the recommendations and rules. It’s also pricey.
My Experience Editing with CMOS
I use several style guides as an editor. Chicago/Turabian was the first style guide I learned (in a college freshman history class many years ago), so it was a formative influence, and I’ll admit to a sort of sentimental attachment to it .
When a client doesn’t know which style guide they want to use, I suggest CMOS because it can apply to really any writing project from academic to self-published, fiction or nonfiction.
Without owning a copy of CMOS, I wouldn’t be able to complete many of my assignments as an editor. While I’m sometimes frustrated by not being able to find the answer I’m looking for as quickly as I think I should be able to—or because it seems to me that the examples could be more thorough—most of the time, I’m able to locate the information I need. The more you use it, the more you understand how to use the index and seek answers.