The Libraries provide the online Chicago Manual of Style to the entire campus. This venerable reference work, with a first edition dating back to 1906, appeared in a new 17th edition in 2017. Used by writers in both the humanities (“notes style”) and the sciences (“author-date style”), the Manual is essential not only for citation formats but for guidance on grammar and usage, quotation and paraphrasing, rights and permissions, foreign languages and scientific notation, manuscript preparation, and much more.
This new update addresses both technical and societal changes in the seven years since the the 16th edition was published. “Email” is no longer hyphenated and “internet” is lower case. Guidance is provided for citing specific versions of e-books, whether EPUB, Kindle, or Google Play, and for citing online materials with no fixed page numbers. Sections covering citation management tools and methods for citing web pages, blogs, and streaming media have been expanded while new sections have been added covering permalinks, reader comments, industry standards, live performances, and online games. Creative Commons licensing and open access publishing are also covered.
Readers will also note how changing social attitudes are reflected in the Manual. “Cis-” has been added to the list of hyphenated terms and “they” is discussed as a singular, gender-neutral pronoun. The Manual gives emphasis to alternative text for images and other techniques to increase accessibility of online publication formats.
While most of these changes are part of a natural, evolutionary, process, longtime aficionados of Chicago style will note the deprecation of the use of “Ibid.” in footnotes and end notes. An abbreviation of the Latin term “ibidem,” meaning “in the same place,; “Ibid.” may no longer provide much context in an electronic environment where notes my be individually linked and so without reference or visual cues to a previous citation.
For a detailed list of changes in this edition, see the Manual website.
“Vale, Ibid.” “Salve, Chicago 17.”