So I’m back. Not that I haven’t been editing, just too close to deadline to cobble together a style guide. Here’s the newest one:

• The word discover: Chicago 7.57 says key terms in a  particular context are often italicized on their first occurrence. Thereafter, they are best set in roman.
• Natives, Native Americans, Indians, Amerindians, etc: Chicago 8.43 says that proper names should be capitalized. Also, it says that many American Indians prefer the term American Indians to Native Americans. However, when saying “The native inhabitants…” the word native should be lowercase.
• Possessive Columbus: Chicago 5.26 says that the possessive of a name is formed by adding ’s. This remains in effect even when the name ends in an s. The only exception for a name is when it ends in the eez sound (Euripides’ tragedies). That’s found in Chicago 7.20.
• Reconquista of Spain, Requerimiento: No need to italicize. Chicago 7.53 says that foreign proper nouns are not italicized in an English context. (For the record, it’s a Spanish/Portuguese word that has been adopted into English to refer to the 800 year crusades on the Iberian peninsula.)
• The adelantados,: Chicago 7.51 says that Italics are use or isolated words and phrases in a foreign language if they are likely to be unfamiliar to readers. Also, that comma afterwards should be in roman. I can’t find the rule for that, but all the examples they give show it that way (see 7.52 and 7.57).
• Pacific Coast: Chicago 8.50 says that Coast should be capitalized in West Coast, but it seems to be more specific that Pacific coast. Are they the same? I can’t find anything on it and Wikipedia has it lowercase (I know it’s not the best source, but still…) My gut says go lowercase, so that’s what I’m doing. UPDATE: Chicago 8.58 has Pacific coast lowercase if it’s general and Pacific Coast uppercase if the region is meant. Since it’s a general usage in my paper, I’m treating my gut to a donut.
• Eastern frontier, southwestern: Lowercase. I’m much more sure on this one. Chicago 8.50.
• Sixteenth century: Chicago 9.36, particular centuries are spelled out and lowercased.
• Four thousand: Round numbers are usuall spelled out. Chicago 9.4.
• The “New World”: Chicago 8.51, Popular names of places are usually capitalized. Quotation marks are not needed. The example it gives is the Old World, but the concept is the same.
• Frontiersman: Again, Chicago 7.57.
• Fur trader-explorer connection: Here, you should use an en-dash. Chicago 6.85.
• Watershed: For the record, the word watershed can stand alone and does not need to preceed moment.

Woo hoo! I’m back. Not that I haven’t been editing between my last posting and now. It’s just that the deadlines have been tighter, thus preventing me from typing up my style sheets. But, never fear, I have three papers that need my attention before this Friday. Here we go…

• Nineteenth century: MLA format requires that we spell out centuries in lowercase letters. Note that it is not hyphenated unless it is used as an adjective (nineteenth-century literature).
• kit out: This is British for “equip.” (Oh, how I love the British….)
• sixties, seventies, and eighties: Decades should be spelled out, but it is also “acceptable” to express them in numbers. Note that the spelled-out versions are lowercase. When expressing them in numbers, write them “the 1990s” or “the ’90s”
• War: When used with a modifier to discuss a specific war, (e.g. the Vietnam War), the word “War” is always capitalized.
• Ellipses (a.k.a. “dot, dot, dot”): MLA doesn’t give a ton of explanation on ellipses; however, whenever MLA lacks a discussion, they default to Chicago. Chicago 11.54 specifies NOT to use an ellipsis points before the first word of a quotation. I prefer this method
• Multiple works by the same author: The parenthetical citation goes like this: (Author, Title ##).
• Using brackets for clarification: If necessary to clarify meaning, use brackets with the meaning after the original word of the quotation rather than just replacing the word. (Did that even make sense?) So the quote would go: “I want to see him [Ryan]” rather than “I want to see [Ryan].”
• Vis-à-vis: This phrase is in Webster’s dictionary. Therefore, it is not italicized when used in the text.

So I’m spending yet another summer Saturday indoors editing. Here’s the APA style guide for a much more technical, scientific paper…

• Introduction: The introduction section of a paper does not include a heading labeling it the introduction (3.30).
• One’s vs. an Individual’s: Throughout the paper, the authors use “one’s” and “an individual’s” interchangeably. I standardized this to change “one’s” to “an individual’s.”
• Lists within a paragraph: If you have a list included within the text of a paragraph, they should be labeled (a) …, (b) … and so on. (Note that the letters are lowercase and not italicized.) If the list is separate from the paragraph, the list should be indented and numbered. (See 3.33 for more information.)

• Back to back parentheses: APA style tells us to not use parentheses back to back (see 3.08). It separates the two parentheticals with a semicolon.
• Full-time, part-time: Since APA doesn’t give any specific direction on usage issues, I revert to Chicago. (See the first part of Chapter 3 on APA Editorial style [p. 77 in my guide], which states that the APA manual “omits general rules explained in widely available style books” and refers us to Chicago). Chicago 7.90 states that “full” should be hyphenated when it precedes a noun. So it will always be “full- and part-time.”
• Parentheses & statistical material within text: This is a tough one because the stats material significantly affects the readability of the text. There is some direction in 3.07 and 3.08 of the Publication Manual. Section 3.08 directs us to not use brackets to set off statistics that already include parentheses and shows us the preferred example, which uses a comma to set off the material. I agree that it’s not the most reader-friendly solution, but it helps cut down on the material that is set off from the text.
• Interpersonal justice categories: Throughout the text, the author several different renditions of his categories (i.e. “high self interpersonal justice”). For standardization purposes, these will be written according to the following pattern: high/low self/others interpersonal justice. Note that there is no apostrophe in “others.” Since it is a category directly similar to self interpersonal justice, which isn’t possessive, I’ve changes the others category to make it possessive. Note that this applies only when talking about it as a category and not the interpersonal justice afforded to others. (Did that make sense?)
• Anchors on a scale: When writing a 1 to 5 scale, the definitions of what those numbers represent (also called anchors) should be included in parentheses and the text itself should be italicized. For example, “ratings scale from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent).” See 3.19 for more information.
• Statistical odds and ends: I’m not even sure what some of these symbols mean, but I did find examples of how to punctuate them. Here’s a list (taken from 3.18 & 3.19):
  • F(1, 53) = 10.03. Note the space between the comma and the 53.
  • 2 (self interpersonal justice treatment) × 3 (other interpersonal justice treatment) study design. (I don’t know if you can tell this here, but the x in the middle is a multiplication symbol, not the letter x.
  • SD for standard deviation (not lowercase sd)
• In justice literature: Because this phrase can so easily be misread as “injustice literature,” I’ve tried to avoid this wording whenever possible.
• Numbers expressed in figures: As per 3.42, figures should be used to represent the following. Bolded items are things that didn’t fall into my personal mental figure/word concepts.
  • time, dates, ages,
  • samples and population sizes,
  • scores and points on a scale,
  • exact sums of money,
  • numbers as having to do with math,
  • numbers that precede a unit of measurement, and
  • all numbers in the abstract of a paper.

And that’s about it for now.

General Usage Issues:

• Not only…but also: Chicago 6.41 states that it depends largely on whether pauses are intended. (I tend to overuse this rule and try to place commas everywhere. They come in pairs—either two or none.) There also seems to be a trend that the shorter examples do not get commas.
• Sea/sea: As per Chicago 8:57, when used as a proper noun to describe a specific place, it should be capitalized (e.g. Aegean Sea). (Also, the same goes for mount, straight, bay, forest, islands, etc.)
• book/Book: Books of the Bible are not italicized and are usually not capitalized, either.
• key-bearer: Websters has “color-bearer” and “standard-bearer” and “live-bearer” all with hyphens. I believe that “key-bearer” will follow that pattern. (Actual usage online is pretty much split between the hyphenated version and the open version.) Either would be acceptable as long as they’re consistent.
• fullness vs. fulness: In a battle, which would win: Webster’s Dictionary or the Church’s style guide? Webster’s spelling is the former, the Church’s is the latter. I personally subscribe to the idea of “When in doubt, go with the Church,” but that mindset is usually more for matters of salvation. In the end, I marked it and the authors can decide where their true allegiances lie.
• winepress: No hyphen as per Webster’s.
• The Three Nephites: There are some differences, even in church publications on lds.org. Since it is talking about them in a similar manner to talking about a specific Quorum of the Twelve, I will capitalize it for the purposes of this paper.

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).

However, whenever I’m asked to introduce errors or “ugliness” into a document, I find myself in a foul mood. A really foul mood. An “if I were a cartoon I’d have a huge black rain cloud above my head” foul mood.

So fast forward to today, where in unrelated webdesign work, I came across this post by the brilliant designer Jeffrey Zeldman. In it, he discusses how—in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence—Thomas Jefferson had included passages that abolished slavery. However, in order to get the Declaration approved by congress, he had been forced to delete these passages. Zeldman then draws the following conclusion.

The next time a client requests changes that make your work less beautiful, less usable, or less smart, remember that greater people than you have lost bigger battles over far more important matters.

What did I tell you? The man’s brilliant. And the funny thing is that even as I was “put in my place,” I felt comforted to know that there are other designers who have perhaps experienced similar foul moods while accepting similarly frustrating, inane changes.

And the next time I’m in D.C., I’m getting a copy of the declaration and tacking it to the wall next to my monitor.

Citations: Can’t find how to cite websites in MLA? Ask the OWL. Need to know the APA rules for citing works by more than three authors? Ask the OWL. Honestly, the Research and Citation section of their site should answer most of your basic citation questions.

Grammar: Honestly, if everyone would read OWL’s tips regarding grammar, CommaTrauma would cease to exist. Confused at the difference between a dangling modifier and a dependent clause? Are your subjects and verbs at odds? The OWL’s got what you need.

Writing: You want information on writing? OWL has useful hints and tips about professional writing, technical writing, scientific writing, academic writing, writing in the social sciences, writing in engineering, creative writing, writing for literary criticism, the writing process, and job search writing. (That’s a lot of writing…)

So there you go. You have now been introduced to the OWL. Now bond.

If it’s a typo, be kind. If it’s a difference of opinion, be accepting. But if I’ve made a genuine mistake…well, I’m not merciful, so I really can’t expect you to be.

And that’s somewhat scary.

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.