True Love: The Chicago Manual of Style
Early in the new year is often a time for renewing subscriptions and that is certainly the case for me—post office, subscriptions to journals, and in my case, renewing my online subscription to the Chicago Manual of Style.
I had heard of the Chicago Manual of Style (CMoS) previously, but it only came fully into focus at the beginning of last year when I was doing the copyedit for The Heir of Night and my US publisher, Voyager (née Eos), advised that they used CMoS as their “house” style guide. (And of course, wise readers that you are, you know I do not mean haute couture.)
What to do? I thought. I don’t know anywhere locally that stocks the CMoS for sale and even if the library has it, I can’t spend the next couple of weeks living day and night under their roof … so of course I went to ‘te search engine’ and found out that—surprise!—you can purchase access to the Chicago Manual of Style Online.
Up until that point I had relied on Strunk and White, The Elements of Style, supplemented by Eats, Shoots & Leaves and a basic facility with English at high school and university—but I recognized that it was time to strike out into deeper waters. And from the moment that I first “opened up” CMoS online, it was a case of true and instant love. Because the CMoS is a source of “great knowledge” and holds the answer to all those gnarly little grammatical questions that plague you when you are at the copyedit and proof edit stage of a manuscript. As the Compleat Angler once was for trout fishermen, so the CMoS is for those who like to cast for and then land good grammar—the perfect life companion for those like me who love to delve down into detail, as well as focus on the grand sweep!
So when I worked my way through the subscription renewal reminders yesterday and came to the CMoS, there was no question or hesitation over renewing for another year—I know that I will not only use the manual extensively as I revise The Gathering of the Lost, The Wall of Night Book Two, but I will enjoy using it as well. In fact—true confession time—I have, um, been known to delve into it ‘just for fun’ …
(I should perhaps also add that the good people at the Chicago Manual of Style offices had no knowledge of the intended writing of this blog post, and certainly no hand in it by means of either coercion or inducement! 🙂 )
Do you write in American? I’m thinking not only of American spelling such as “plow”, “color” but also odd expressions like “I could care less” instead of “I couldn’t care less” or “visit with” instead of just “visit”
As much as possible, I use US spelling since my ‘first publishers’ are US, but because I am writing alternate world / alternate era fantasy, colloquialisms are not really appropriate so I try and avoid them anyway. In terms of grammar, mostly that is fairly standard between US and UK, except for a few small differences like the Oxford comma, which the US uses but the UK doesn’t (go figure!)
I found it amusing that American grammar is actually more “English” in some ways than English grammar. I actually like it, it makes more sense to me. Unfortunately, because I tend to write in “American”, I have to really think to write something in Kiwi! 🙂
I love the CMoS, too. It’s a wonderful reference and very handy.
I seem to manage to switch between the two well enough, which is good–it would be perturbing to find oneself writing in a mish-mash of both.