EDITOR: I guess this is a disclaimer. This is my first time working with Chicago-style footnotes—really the first for footnotes. I did my best, but there may be a lot of problems and errors that I created.

And it made me smile. I don’t know many people who do feel comfortable with Chicago citation styles (and those who do feel comfortable with it have considerable industry experience). It’s definitely confusing at the beginning. Even as an editor, I am still chained to my Chicago—but I’ve gotten pretty good at figuring out where to look.

So, while this is definitely tailored to the decisions I’m making for this one particular paper, here’s a sample Chicago-style style sheet. I’ll also include my thoughts, when pertinent.

1. Choosing between (a) the notes and bibliography option or (b) the author-date option.
One of the nice things about Chicago is its flexibility (see 16.7). My paper’s publisher dictates that all source information should be cited parenthetically, (Last Name, Year of Publication, p#) as listed in the author-date system. However, the publisher also dictates that the sources should be listed in a “bibliography” at the end of the volume. Then the author has entitled the citations “For reference and further study,” pointing to an author-date style. Ultimately, I think I’m going to use the author-date style within the text and the bibliographic style for the reference list. I chose this for three reasons: (a) what the author has compiled most represents a “full bibliography” as mentioned in Chicago 16.74 and 75 because it includes additional relevant works, (b) in the author’s field of study—religious texts—the dates are much less important than in other fields, and (c) the list was already in the bibliography format—why make it more complicated than it has to be?

2. Do works mentioned parenthetically need to be fully referenced in the bibliography?
Yes. Let’s make things easier for the truly interested readers and give them all the information they will need.

3. What to do with citations within notes?
When any work is cited within the notes, it will be given the same citation as in the text (name date, pp) and then will be fully referenced in the bibliography.

4. What to do with multiple sets of parentheses?
Chicago 6.103 says to avoid having back-to-back parentheses. However, the in-text citation format for scriptural references is enclosed in parentheses. So what do do with a situation like the following?

(see Heb. 13:8; Gen. 25:19–23)(Draper and Parry 1999, 122)

I haven’t decided what to do with this. I’ll post more when I figure it out.

Update: After a week’s worth of deliberation, I can’t find any definite back-up in Chicago. Sorry. For what it’s worth, here’s what I found. In 15:41 I did find two sets of parentheses together:

anno mundi (in the year of the world) (not to be confused with ante meridiem; see 15.44).

In 15.44, it has a case where two parentheses could have been used, but where one set was changed to square brackets:

meridies (noon [rarely used]).

Note that in the first example, the parentheticals served two different and distinct purposes, one to define and another to clarify. In the second example, both parenthetical references were of equal weight, both giving additional descriptive information about the term. I think this is where it is significant. (Also, did you notice how my examples are not at all related to the parentheses question? This section is just where I happened to find examples. I figured if I found examples of use in Chicago, then I could apply those same principles to the section.)

At any rate, I’ve come to the format that I like best. I’m sticking with:

(Draper and Parry 1999, 122; see Heb. 13:8; Gen. 25:19–23).

5. What to do with spaces around the slashes in the manuscript?
In Chicago 6.112 it says that normally there are no spaces between the options and the slash—except where one or more of the terms being compared by the slash is an open compound, then use a thin space around the slash. However, since the manuscript (MS) has many instances where it compares both single words and phrases, I think I will leave out the space around the slash. It’s better to be consistent and never use spaces around the slash rather than going back and forth. As long as it’s consistent, the reader will understand what is being compared because of the repetition.

6. Standardizing capitalization
The MS is seriously lacking consistency in capitalization. Here’s my thoughts:

• Church/church: Chicago 8.106 says that when used alone to denote organized Christianity as an institution, the church is usually lowercase. However, when used as a short-hand to represent the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Church is what is recommended on lds.org and, therefore, is what will be used. The majority of capital churches here will be changed to lowercase.
• Saints/saints: Same idea as above. Lowercase saints when referring to early Christian church members and uppercase when referring to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (This fits with Chicago 8.100 and the “spirit” of 8.106).
• Quorum of the Twelve
• Revelation (I’ve never realized—in all my 24 years—that it didn’t have an s. Seriously…)
• Jewish high priest: no caps on the title b/c it isn’t a specific person.
• celestial kingdom: the Church refers to it in lowercase
• home base with a space (Even though I think it should be one word. But I tend to like closed word forms. Not in an Orwellian goodspeak way, though.)
• Christlike (no hyphen)
• Mount (capitalized and spelled out; see 15.32)

7. Citing a note from another work
The abbreviation for notes is n (plural nn). So, for the author-date style, Chicago 16.109 shows that it should be (Author date, p#n#) So, for example, it would be (Magie 1959, 43n50). In 16.43, the bibliographical shortened note style shows it as (Author, Title, p# n. #), which would look like (Magie, Roman Rule, 43, n. 50). However, in 17.140 (the more traditional style) shows it as (Magie, Roman Rule, 43 n. 50). So 17.140 is the rule I’ll go with.

8. Letters representing rhyme schemes or stanzas in poetry
Should not be separated by commas and should be italicized (aabbccbbaa).

9. Collective nouns: Subject-verb agreement
I, personally, think that it should be “the group was” not “the group were”. However, the author is referring to the group as a collection of individuals; therefore, Webster’s English Usage dictionary dictates that the plural verb should be used. It doesn’t sound quite right to me, but it does make the rest of the paragraph easier to deal with.

10. What to do with scriptural verse numbers when quoting blocks of scripture?
Chicago 6.127 and 28 give the best rendering of what to do, I think. Since the scriptures are to be shown as, essentially, vertical lists in a paragraph style. So it would be correct to render them how they appear in most church texts. Also, since the formatting requires that scripture verses be single-spaced, I added the indentation to the verses required by 6.128 and matching the Church’s style.

11. Dates, dates, dates…
In Chicago 9.38, it tells us what to do about BC/AD, BCE/CE, etc. (It’s a matter of house and personal preference regarding the abbreviations used and whether or not to use small caps and periods—it’s all perfectly acceptable to them.) However, it is important to note that the Latin forms precede the year, where everything else comes after it. (For example, “Even though my brothers act like I was born in 500 BC, I was actually born in AD 1983.”)

12. Chapters as chapters (pages as pages, etc.)
When a chapter, page number, volumes, etc., of a book is being discussed, *always* use a number. Also you can lowercase the word “chapter” or “page.” (It’s always “In chapter 2″ not “In Chapter Two.”)

13. What to do with the “See” and “See also” notes…
Should they be in the notes or included parenthetically in the text? It goes back-and-forth in the manuscript…. To be consistent, they should be all one way or all the other. I prefer to clean up the text by taking them out—it adds several more footnotes, but the manuscript will read cleaner, in my opinion.

14. Lines before block quotes?
Chicago 11.11 says that this question is usually decided by the publisher, so I’m leaving the text as it is. Easy.

15. Writing out fractions
Chicago 5.92 dictates that the fraction retains the s when it is used as a phrasal adjective (two-thirds majority). It is also hyphenated (no en- or em-dash).

Let me explain. A few weeks ago my coworkers and I went to Fiddler’s Elbow on our lunch break. As we drove into the back parking lot, I quickly became irritated by a row of crimson banners supporting the University of Utah. And, no, this was not because I’m a huge backer of rival Brigham Young University. No, what really bothered me was the content of several of the banners.

They read: “Go Ute’s.”

Go Ute’s? Go U-T-E-apostrophe-S?! There’s no apostrophe in a plural! How could any decent person (or group of people, for that matter) sleep at night after committing—in 200 point font—a huge and glaring error in punctuation?! Why didn’t anyone—the designer, editor, or printer—catch this before it was plastered all over the side of a completely innocent building? What kind of place was this?

I’ll admit it. I couldn’t think of anything else during lunch. When we went out into the parking lot, I went out of my way and looked at the sign yet again. Yep—still wrong. At this point, I could no longer suffer in silence and began venting my surprise to my coworkers. Shortly after my coworkers’ eyes glazed over, I realized that perhaps there was a better forum for my frustration.

And thus, CommaTrauma was born.