Saller - The subversive copy editor: advice from Chicago (or, how to negotiate good relationships with your writers, your colleagues, and yourself)

I hear you.

As the editor of The Chicago Manual of Style Onlines monthly Chicago Style Q&A, Ive been handling readers questions about writing style since the University of Chicago Press launched the Q&A in 1997. That amounts to tens of thousands of queries from students, professors, copy editors, businesspeople, and others who struggle as they write and edit. As of this writing, The Chicago Manual of Style Online receives more than a million page views per month. Fortunately for us, most visitors do not submit questions to the Q&A.

The Chicago Manual of Style, for the uninitiated, is one of the English-speaking worlds most revered style manuals. Although Chicago style may not have the most users, it surely has the most devoted. From its beginnings in the 1890s as a simple in-house sheet of proofreading tips for manuscript editors at the University of Chicago Press to its current online, print, and mobile optimized editions, it has grown into a bible for writers and editors in almost every kind of writing outside journalism (where Associated Press style and New York Times style dominate).

Written by the Manuscript Editing Department at the University of Chicago Press, The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) has advice on everything from punctuation and capitalization to mathematics and diacritics. Its chapters on the styling of note and bibliography citations have been adopted by universities around the world. Users of CMOS include the most impossibly learned writers and editors as well as the most clueless, and for nearly twenty years the monthly Q&A has played host to them all.

Reading the questions that come through the site is a daily adventure away from editing tasks. We answer as many as we can, and I choose the best ones for the monthly posting. The range of topics can be startling. Heres a note we received from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at NASA:

Q / Dear Chicago Manual of Style Q&A Person: What is the rule for sequencing adjectives in a series? For example, we know that numbers come before size indicators (e.g., six small apples). We also know that colors come after size indicators (e.g., six small yellow apples). The specific problem is whether to say narrow anticyclonically dominated northwestern coast or anticyclonically dominated narrow northwestern coast. (Please dont say the correct answer is anticyclonically dominated northwestern narrow coast!)

And their kicker ending: What is the rule that supports your answer?

In contrast, another rather dreamy-sounding note read simply, Dear CMOS, What is Chicago style? Could you give an example? And one of my favorites: Would rats die if they drink soda?

Questions come from all over the world, some from readers who struggle with English. Their grammar questions go deep and are sometimes beyond our ability to respond. (Please tell differences of at and to.)

One day this came in:

Q / Hello. I wonder how I can cite the Korean Constitutional Court case. The