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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

In American English, “traveling” is spelled with one el but “excelling” with two, a difference that depends on whether the first or second syllable is stressed. In British English, both words get two els. Details in the Q&A.

chicagomanualofstyle.org

The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Edition

Find it. Write it. Cite it. The Chicago Manual of Style Online is the venerable, time-tested guide to style, usage, and grammar in an accessible online format. ¶ It is the indispensable reference for ...

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Hi, @theredshoes.bluesky.social. Thank you for commenting, but we are unsure of what it is that you dislike about the ghostly canine image. Can you please let us know so that we can properly acknowledge your problem?

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Q. Is s’s’ the correct plural possessive form of s? Q. Is there such a thing as a suspended en dash? Q. How do you cite syndicated newspaper articles? We answer these and other questions about Chicago style in the October Q&A at CMOS Online.

cmos.style

The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Edition

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Chicago’s most popular citation style is also its most flexible. Explore how it works—and why footnotes are styled differently from bibliography entries—in the latest update from CMOS Shop Talk.

cmosshoptalk.com

Understanding Chicago-Style Notes and Bibliography Entries

Chicago’s main system for citing sources consists of numbered footnotes or endnotes and, usually, a corresponding list of sources in a bibliography.

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Q. Is “roadtrip” ever correct? Q. Would you hyphenate “almost encyclopedic” before a noun? Q. How do you cite an article in a double issue of a magazine? We answer these and other questions about Chicago style in the September Q&A at CMOS Online. cmos.style/QandA

Close-up of a Jack Russell terrier in orange sunglasses and a blue collar driving a modern sedan, its left paw resting on the door frame while announcing the CMOS Q&A.

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

What does “the 2000s” mean to you, the decade or the century or the millennium? What about “the 1900s”? Our latest update at CMOS Shop Talk considers the challenge of writing about first decades.

cmosshoptalk.com

Decades

This post was originally published in 2019, or just before the beginning of the 2020s, also known as the ’20s or the twenties. Every decade after this one will be referred to similarly: 2030s, ’30s, o...

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Q. Would “as well as” be lowercase in a title? Q. What’s the rule for hyphenating a letter plus a noun? Q. How should timings be formatted in source citations? We answer these and other questions about Chicago style in the August Q&A at CMOS Online. cmos.style/QandA

A brown-and-white Chihuahua announces the August Q&A. The dog, wearing sunglasses, sits on a strip of sand against a deep-blue background, its long hair blowing sideways in the wind.

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

In Chicago style, “time-clock-punching employees” (with two hyphens) would be preferred to “time clock–punching employees” (with an en dash) and “time-clock–punching employees” (with a hyphen and an en dash). Details in the Q&A.

chicagomanualofstyle.org

The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Edition

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Q. Do you need a comma before “then” when it means “in that case”? Q. Is it “the angel Gabriel” or “the Angel Gabriel”? Q. Do typefaces/fonts need to be credited? We answer these and other questions about Chicago style in the July Q&A at CMOS Online.

chicagomanualofstyle.org

The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Edition

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

AP style — yes. Chicago style—no. Some other styles – spaced en dash.

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

In that case, you might need a comma (or you could join Facebook).

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Q. Should a compound modifier be hyphenated if the noun doesn’t directly follow? Q. Should I retain accents in Spanish city names? Q. How should amendments to laws be cited? We answer these and other questions about Chicago style in the June Q&A at CMOS Online. cmos.style/QandA

A border collie wearing white-framed sunglasses announces the CMOS June Q&A while encircled by a watermelon-themed swim ring against a yellow background.

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

If “a.m.” means before noon and “p.m.” means after, then what do “12 a.m.” and “12 p.m.” mean? Noon and midnight (or midnight and noon) are the subjects of this latest update from CMOS Shop Talk.

cmosshoptalk.com

Noon and Midnight

Many of us write or say “12 p.m.” (or “12:00 p.m.”) when we mean noon and “12 a.m.” when we mean midnight. This seems reasonable enough, at least intuitively.

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

The commenting tools in Adobe Acrobat have helped to make on-screen proofreading the norm. But how exactly do they work? PDF markup is once again in the spotlight, in a newly updated post from CMOS Shop Talk.

cmosshoptalk.com

PDF Proofreading Markup

Copyeditors typically work in Microsoft Word or Google Docs or the like, making and suggesting changes directly in the document, which at that stage is still referred to as a manuscript. Proofreaders ...

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

Q. Is “The more the merrier” a complete sentence? Q. Is “kindly” used correctly in “We kindly ask …”? Q. “It’s not only this, it’s that.” Is that a comma splice? We answer these and other questions about Chicago style in the May Q&A at CMOS Online. cmos.style/QandA

A white shorthair cat and a border collie peer at us over the top of a sign announcing the May Q&A from The Chicago Manual of Style. An orange background matches their eyes.

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Q. Should “ill” plus a verb be hyphenated? Q. How are titles of books treated in Spanish text? Q. What is the rule on hyphenating multiple colors? We answer these and other questions about Chicago style in the April Q&A at CMOS Online. cmos.style/QandA

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

Are tabular figures proportional or monospaced? What is a serif? Is letterspacing the same thing as kerning? What does the “S” in “HTTPS” mean? Explore these and other editing-adjacent terms in the latest update from CMOS Shop Talk.

cmosshoptalk.com

Key Terms Every Editor Should Know

In editing as in life, things tend to come in pairs. Life has its ups and downs, left and right, sea and land, victory and defeat. In editing you have capitals and lowercase, justified and ragged righ...

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

Q. Should asterisk note references be superscripts? Q. Is it OK to use “where” for something other than a place? Q. I’m trying to cite info about The Simpsons. It’s complicated. Can you help? We answer these and other questions about Chicago style in the March Q&A at CMOS Online. cmos.style/QandA

The Q and A, spelled out in a whimsical yellow cartoon font with black shadows against a warm red background.

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

Footnotes or endnotes? Many of us prefer footnotes, but endnotes can be less distracting, especially when there are no numbers in the text. Find out how these “invisible” endnotes work, this week at CMOS Shop Talk.

cmosshoptalk.com

“Invisible” Endnotes

This post discusses the pros and cons of so-called invisible endnotes in books and how to prepare a manuscript that has them.

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

Q. Is it “password protect” or “password-protect”? Q. Why aren’t “heaven” and “hell” always capitalized? Q. How would I cite an unpublished diary entry? We answer these and other questions about Chicago style in the February Q&A at CMOS Online. cmos.style/QandA

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

Q. “Do the speaker or the characters have any faults?” Or “Does”? Q. En dash or hyphens in “time clock punching employees”? Q. Can you have a footnote 1 with no 2? We answer these and other questions about Chicago style in the January Q&A at CMOS Online. cmos.style/QandA

A white, scarf-wearing Samoyed dog races down a groomed trail on a red and black snowboard and announces the January CMOS Q&A.

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

Hi! You’re right to question these, but apparently Source Serif 4 (the Google font in the post) has a slightly thinner-than-usual thin space. Had we used Arial (for example), the relative widths would make more sense (see image). We might need to add another footnote!

Screenshot illustrating the relative widths of a thin space and a six-per-em space in Source Serif 4 and Arial fonts. The thin space is the slightly thinner space in Source Serif 4. In Arial, the reverse is true.

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

Q. I know about commas and spouses, but what about friends? Q. Do we refer to fictional characters by first or last name? Q. Is “four-hundredth birthday” correct? We answer these and other questions about Chicago style in the December Q&A at CMOS Online. cmos.style/QandA

A Pembroke Welsh corgi and a calico cat frolic together in the snow and announce the December Q&A.

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Reposted by The Chicago Manual of Style

The University of Chicago Press @uchicagopress.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

The end of our sitewide sale (and our holiday shipping deadline) is coming up soon! Enjoy 30% off these stocking-stuffer-sized beauties and more with code HOLIDAY25 through December 3. 🛍️ Shop here: buff.ly/zQhPoCx

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

Peter B. Kaufman’s new book provides a publisher’s road map for a world in which video has become at least as important as text. The Moving Image: A User’s Manual is the subject of our latest interview at CMOS Shop Talk.

cmosshoptalk.com

Peter B. Kaufman talks about The Moving Image

Peter B. Kaufman is Associate Director of Development at MIT Open Learning. He is the author of The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge (Seven Stories Press, 2021) and founder of Intelli...

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

The abbreviations “i.e.” and “e.g.” are clearly not the same, so why are they always getting mixed up? And which one can be used with “etc.”? Refresh your knowledge of three common Latin abbreviations, this week at CMOS Shop Talk.

cmosshoptalk.com

I.e., E.g., Etc.

Latin may be a dead language, but many of its words and phrases flourish in today’s English. The most common Latin borrowing might be an abbreviation: the all-purpose etc., short for et cetera, “and o...

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Q. Why doesn’t “post-traumatic stress disorder” have an en dash? Q. Neither I/me nor my dog responded. “I” or “me”? Q. What’s the best way to style “the f-word”? We answer these and other questions about Chicago style in the November Q&A at CMOS Online. cmos.style/QandA

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

Q. Should “little blue heron” be capitalized? Q. Should it be “sample A” or “Sample A”? Q. How would you style the title of a playlist? We answer these and other questions about Chicago style in the October Q&A at CMOS Online. cmos.style/QandA

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

Family members may deserve our love and respect, but when do they merit an initial capital? Get the latest advice for capitalizing kinship names and similar words for people, this week at CMOS Shop Talk.

cmosshoptalk.com

Capitalizing Kinship Names and the Like

A kinship name is a name for a family member, whether close or distant. Such names include mom, dad, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, cousin, and so on.

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

Q. Why is MS Word asking me to change “all of” to “all”? Q. Do I have to put boat names in italics? Q. How do I cite a Substack post? We answer these and other questions about Chicago style in the September Q&A at CMOS Online.

chicagomanualofstyle.org

The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Edition

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

One of the best ways to understand a rule is to consider its exceptions. Find out more in this newly updated post at CMOS Shop Talk (and be sure to read to the end for links to two more “exceptional” posts).

cmosshoptalk.com

A Few Exceptions Worth Noting

Even the most straightforward rule will be subject to an exception sooner or later. That’s why CMOS qualifies so many of its rules with usually or generally. But some exceptions are so common that the...

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

Q. Can the first defined use of an abbreviation be plural? Q. Does “painters tape” need an apostrophe? Q. How do you cite a book that has a typo on the title page? We answer these and other questions about Chicago style in the August Q&A at CMOS Online. cmos.style/QandA

A pied French bulldog in a golden collar trots along a wide sandy beach on a sunny day while announcing the CMOS Q&A.

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The Chicago Manual of Style @chicagomanual.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

Q. Should “Fortune” be in italics in “Fortune 500”? Q. Is a comma needed after a word like “yesterday”? Q. Does a term following “called” need to be in italics? We answer these and other questions about Chicago style in the July Q&A at CMOS Online. cmos.style/QandA

A white shepherd dog in a tropical shirt and yellow sunglasses smiles at us from a perfectly blue sky and announces the July Q&A

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