When writing an italicized title, word, or phrase, some authors are in the habit of not hitting Ctrl+I again until the beginning of the next non-italicized word, even if there’s punctuation in between that doesn’t “belong to” the italicized term. This follows what the Chicago Manual (6.4) calls “a more traditional system . . . once preferred by Chicago and still preferred by some as more aesthetically pleasing,” but the current standard is that punctuation after an italicized term should not be italicized unless it’s part of the term itself. CMOS 6.2 gives the following examples (with my commentary in parentheses); I’ve highlighted non-italicized punctuation in pink and italicized punctuation in yellow.

• For light amusement he turns to the Principia Mathematica! (The exclamation point isn’t italicized because it isn’t part of the title, though that would be fun.)
• How can they be sure that the temperature was in fact rising? (The question mark isn’t italicized.)
• The letters a, b, and c are often invoked as being fundamental. (In lists of italicized terms, do not italicize the commas between items—people often miss this!)
• There are two primary audiences for The Chicago Manual of Style: perfectionists and humorists. (The colon after the title is part of the surrounding sentence, so it isn’t italicized.)
• The Beatles’ Help! was released long before the heyday of the music video. (In this case, the exclamation point is part of the title, so it is italicized.)
• After reading Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty, she was inspired to write a program that generates poetry from prose. (This title contains a colon and a comma, which are italicized, but the comma that follows the title isn’t.)

Especially when I’m editing citations and bibliographies, one of the first things I do is run Paul Beverley’s “PunctuationItalicOff” macro, which un-italicizes all punctuation that isn’t followed by italic text.

The chart below (extracted from my free resource on switching between bibliography and footnote formats in Chicago Style) indicates when and where to include page numbers in different types of citations.

	Book	Book Chapter	Journal Article
Bibliography	no page numbers	full page range (following the editor’s name and a comma)	full page range (following the parenthetical date and a colon)
Full footnote: entire work	no page numbers	full page range (following the parenthetical punctuation info and a comma)	full page range (following the parenthetical date and a colon)
Full footnote: specific page(s)	specific number or range (following the parenthetical publication info and a comma)	specific number or range (following the parenthetical publication info and a comma)	specific number or range (following the parenthetical date and a colon)
Short footnote: entire work	no page numbers	no page numbers	no page numbers
Short footnote: specific page(s)	specific number or range (following the shortened title and a comma)	specific number or range (following the shortened title and a comma)	specific number or range (following the shortened title and a comma)

(Obviously, not everything you may be citing is a book, chapter, or journal article; see CMOS chapter 14 for information about other types of sources. And if you’re using a citation style other than Chicago, follow the guidelines for that format!)

In Chicago-style footnotes and bibliographies, I often see authors mixing up the different ways of indicating that someone is the editor of a book. Here are two rules to help sort this out.

1. When ed. or eds. comes after one or more names, it’s short for “editor” or “editors,” so there is a singular/plural distinction. The abbreviation is used in both footnote and bibliography formats.

Footnote, one editor: Timothy J. Cooley, ed., Cultural Sustainabilities: Music, Media, Language, Advocacy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2019).

Bibliography, one editor: Cooley, Timothy J., ed. Cultural Sustainabilities: Music, Media, Language, Advocacy. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2019.

Footnote, multiple editors: Stephen C. Meyer and Kirsten Yri, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020).

Bibliography, multiple editors: Meyer, Stephen C., and Kirsten Yri, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.

2. When ed. comes before one or more names, it’s short for “edited by,” so there is no singular/plural distinction. The abbreviation is only used in footnotes; “edited by” is written out in bibliographies. In the examples below, note also that the formatting of “edited by” differs depending on whether the source is a book with an author and an editor or a chapter in an edited volume.

Footnote, book with an author and an editor: Michael Tippett, Tippett on Music, ed. Meirion Bowen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

Bibliography, book with an author and an editor: Tippett, Michael. Tippett on Music. Edited by Meirion Bowen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Footnote, chapter in an edited volume: Eric Richards, “The Limits of the Australian Emigrant Letter,” in Letters across Borders: The Epistolary Practices of International Migrants, ed. Bruce S. Elliott, David A. Berber, and Suzanne M. Sinke (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 56–74.

Bibliography, chapter in an edited volume: Richards, Eric. “The Limits of the Australian Emigrant Letter.” In Letters across Borders: The Epistolary Practices of International Migrants, edited by Bruce S. Elliott, David A. Berber, and Suzanne M. Sinke, 56–74. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

For more of these kinds of details, check out my free PDF on switching between footnote and bibliography formats in Chicago style.

When I’m line editing a manuscript, one of the things I pay attention to is the placement of paragraph breaks—breaking up overly long paragraphs, combining short ones that don’t really stand on their own, and making sure paragraphs start and end in places that will help the reader follow the threads of the author’s argument. I often find myself moving a paragraph break by just one sentence because what the author has written at the end of one paragraph would be more effective as the opening sentence of the next one. This typically happens when the author is using the end of a paragraph to introduce the next paragraph’s new topic or analytical lens, so my strong recommendation is to avoid changing topics at the end of a paragraph.

Eric Hayot writes in The Elements of Academic Style: Writing for the Humanities (2014, 108):

The most obvious transitions happen between paragraphs, partly because the paragraph is in itself the signal of a transition (from one idea to the next). The first question that comes up is, then, whether you should transition at the end of a paragraph or at the beginning of one. My answer: almost always at the beginning.

That’s because I conceive the job of the end of a paragraph to be to close out and reframe the action of the paragraph itself. Replacing that closure with transitions that point us forward, though it looks and feels natural to many writers, often produces paragraphs that never quite take responsibility for their own work. . . . It gives the illusion of linking and subordination when in fact what you often have is a series of purely horizontal relationships that don’t communicate what they amount to.

On a more basic level, from the reader’s perspective, a sentence on a different topic at the end of a paragraph will probably just seem like a non sequitur at first. They might backtrack and make the connection across the paragraph break after they’ve read a few more sentences, but you don’t want to give your readers those “oh, now I get it” moments if you can help it.

Let’s take an example from the Wikipedia page for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The passage on the left changes topics at the ends of paragraphs, and the passage on the right (the original text) changes topics at the beginnings of paragraphs.

New topic at the end

New topic at the beginning

Between April and December 1775, Mozart developed an enthusiasm for violin concertos, producing a series of five (the only ones he ever wrote), which steadily increased in their musical sophistication. The last three—K. 216, K. 218, K. 219—are now staples of the repertoire. In 1776, he turned his efforts to piano concertos, culminating in the E♭ concerto K. 271 of early 1777, considered by critics to be a breakthrough work. Despite these artistic successes, Mozart grew increasingly discontented with Salzburg and redoubled his efforts to find a position elsewhere. One reason was his low salary, 150 florins a year; Mozart longed to compose operas, and Salzburg provided only rare occasions for these. The situation worsened in 1775 when the court theatre was closed, especially since the other theatre in Salzburg was primarily reserved for visiting troupes. Two long expeditions in search of work interrupted this long Salzburg stay. Mozart and his father visited Vienna from 14 July to 26 September 1773, and Munich from 6 December 1774 to March 1775. Neither visit was successful, though the Munich journey resulted in a popular success with the premiere of Mozart’s opera La finta giardiniera.

Between April and December 1775, Mozart developed an enthusiasm for violin concertos, producing a series of five (the only ones he ever wrote), which steadily increased in their musical sophistication. The last three—K. 216, K. 218, K. 219—are now staples of the repertoire. In 1776, he turned his efforts to piano concertos, culminating in the E♭ concerto K. 271 of early 1777, considered by critics to be a breakthrough work. Despite these artistic successes, Mozart grew increasingly discontented with Salzburg and redoubled his efforts to find a position elsewhere. One reason was his low salary, 150 florins a year; Mozart longed to compose operas, and Salzburg provided only rare occasions for these. The situation worsened in 1775 when the court theatre was closed, especially since the other theatre in Salzburg was primarily reserved for visiting troupes. Two long expeditions in search of work interrupted this long Salzburg stay. Mozart and his father visited Vienna from 14 July to 26 September 1773, and Munich from 6 December 1774 to March 1775. Neither visit was successful, though the Munich journey resulted in a popular success with the premiere of Mozart’s opera La finta giardiniera.

Do you see how the version on the left breaks the connection between the transition sentences and what follows? Going from the first paragraph to the second, a reader might think, “‘One reason was his low salary…’ Wait, one reason for what? ‘Salzburg provided…’ Oh, one of his reasons for wanting to leave Salzburg,” whereas they don’t have to do that backtracking with the version on the right. From the second paragraph to the third, we need “Two long expeditions” at the beginning of the paragraph to make it immediately clear that the trips to Vienna and Munich are the expeditions in question.

Going back to Hayot’s point about closure, I’ve found that the effect of a misplaced transition is even more disorienting at the end of a section (or even a whole chapter!). If you want to use the paragraph or two before the new section heading to begin to weave Topic B into the end of your discussion of Topic A, that can be effective, but what doesn’t work is to round out Topic A and then throw in a sentence about Topic B right at the end of the section—instead of giving a helpful preview of your next topic, it creates a non sequitur that the reader will have to backtrack to resolve.

(Okay, maybe I’m especially sensitive to this one because I haven’t had R1-level library database access since 2016…)

When you’re citing a source you found through a database your institution’s library subscribes to, copying and pasting the URL from your address bar might result in a link your readers won’t be able to use. There are two main reasons for this:

1. It might be a URL for the search you conducted to find the source, not a direct link to the page for the source itself.
2. If the URL includes your institution’s library proxy (something like proxy.xxxxx.edu), it will lead to a login page that only works for people with off-campus access to your institution’s library resources.

In many cases, you don’t actually need a URL at all, though you may need to indicate the database where you found the thing you’re citing. When you do need or want to provide a URL, make sure to use a DOI or other permalink, which you can often find somewhere on the page in the database. CMOS 14.11 recommends testing links while logged out of your library account to make sure they lead somewhere that will give the reader information about the source, even if they can’t access the full text.

For more advice about cleaning up URLs to make them more useful for the reader, see this post from the CMOS Shop Talk blog.

A few tips from chapters 6 and 14 of the Chicago Manual on question marks and exclamation points with other punctuation.

These two basic rules apply both in running text (including dialogue) and in citations:

1. If a period would normally follow something ending in a question mark or exclamation point, omit the period. (6.124, 14.96)
   • She stood up and shouted, “I don’t believe you!”
   • Two years later, she played the title role in Hello, Dolly!
   • Albee, Edward. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? New York: Atheneum, 1962.
   • Munroe, What If? [Short-form footnote citing the book as a whole.]
2. If a comma would normally follow, omit the comma unless the thing ending in a question mark or exclamation point is a work title. If the work title is in quotation marks, the comma comes before the closing quotation mark as normal. (6.125, 14.96)
   • “Why are you like this?” they yelled.
   • “You need to get your own copy of the Chicago Manual of Style!” he insisted. [Note that because the exclamation point isn’t part of the title—though wouldn’t that be fun?—the comma is omitted and the exclamation point is not italicized.]
   • Rodgers and Hammerstein’s first musical, Oklahoma!, was given a Special Tony Award for its fiftieth anniversary in 1993.
   • He said his favorite song was David Bowie’s “Life On Mars?,” but he didn’t know any of the words.
   • Carolyn Abbate, “Music—Drastic or Gnostic?,” Critical Inquiry 30 (Spring 2004): 505–36.

Here’s a third rule that only applies to work titles:

3. When the main title of a work ends in a question mark or exclamation point and is followed by a subtitle, omit the colon. However, when it ends with a question mark or exclamation point followed by a quotation mark, keep the colon. (14.96)
   • Claudia Macdonald, “Are We There? Women’s Studies in a Professional Music Program,” Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 8 (2004): 42–46.
   • Elissa Harbert, “‘Ever to the Right’? The Political Life of 1776 in the Nixon Era,” American Music 35, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 237–70. [Although the main title has quotation marks around it, the question mark isn’t part of the quoted phrase, so it follows the quotes and the colon is omitted.]
   • Robert K. McMichael, “‘We Insist—Freedom Now!’: Black Moral Authority, Jazz, and the Changeable Shape of Whiteness,” American Music 16, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 375–416. [In this case, the exclamation point is part of the quoted phrase that makes up the main title, so it comes before the closing quotation mark and the colon is not omitted.]

Unlike APA and MLA, the Chicago Manual of Style still requires the place of publication, not just the publisher’s name, in citations for books. However, if multiple cities are listed, you only need to include the first one (14.129). Some common instances of this:

• Brill – just Leiden, not Leiden and Boston
• Duke University Press – just Durham, not Durham and London
• Routledge – New York or London (whichever is listed first), not both
• University of California Press (older books) – just Berkeley, not Berkeley and Los Angeles

When I’m editing citations, I typically take out extra cities, both because the Chicago Manual says I can and because it makes it easier to achieve consistency across entries for books with the same publication details. (Of course, publishers can move around, so be careful—my dissertation cited a lot of UC Press books, and the first time I opened one and saw “Oakland” instead of “Berkeley” was disorienting.)

I often see manuscripts where the author is following the US style of double quotation marks around quotes from the sources they’re citing, but using single quotation marks as “scare quotes” or to refer to a word or phrase. Formal US English doesn’t make such a distinction—single quotation marks are only used for a quote within a quote.

(And for headlines in AP style, and in other cases I’m not concerned with here. Don’t @ me.)

If you’re used to relying on a double/single distinction to indicate which phrases in quotation marks are someone else’s words and which are your own, be aware that a copyeditor will probably turn them all into double quotation marks. This means you should write and format your text in such a way that the reader can make the distinction without that visual cue.

In the following example, the author quotes twice from the book being discussed (a mid-twentieth-century book on women’s colleges), then puts single scare quotes around superior to show critical distance from this idea of women having a special gift for understanding men’s intellectual or artistic work (ugh).

Deeming cultural creativity “vastly overrated,” he calls for women’s “sense of persons” and of relationships to be valued more highly, along with their ‘superior’ ability to understand the human significance of the art and science created by men.

A copyeditor would likely change those single quotes to double quotes, but this would make “superior” look like another quotation from the book being cited, which it isn’t. To avoid this ambiguity, the author could signal that critical distance without using scare quotes at all: their supposedly superior ability, what he considers a superior ability, etc.

(Okay, this is a line from my dissertation, and I went with purportedly superior.)

Of course, while the occasional scare quote can be effective, we shouldn’t be overusing them. If you’ve noticed (or an editor or colleague has pointed out) a tendency to use too many scare quotes in your writing, check out this post from Tweed Editing.

For referring to a word or phrase, the Chicago Manual (7.63) gives the option of either italics or quotation marks. (One of the example sentences: The term critical mass is more often used metaphorically than literally.) In writing that discusses terms from other languages, I like to apply a rule of using italics to refer to non-English terms and quotation marks for English terms. Another example from the same section of CMOS: The Spanish verbs ser and estar are both rendered by “to be.” (This is different from the question of whether and when to italicize non-English terms when you’re using them rather than mentioning them, which I might get to in a later post.)

When I started using macros in Word, one of the first ones I installed was Paul Beverley’s CaseNextWord, which changes the case of the next word after the cursor. I use it a lot, mostly to fix mistakes with title case in chapter titles, subheadings, and citations. More often than not, this means capitalizing words that the author left in lowercase.

The details of title case differ by style guide, but in Chicago, APA, and MLA, the rules are based primarily on the grammatical function of the word, not its length or whether it’s stressed when speaking. You can find more complete guides to title case elsewhere, but here’s a list of the types of words I often find myself capitalizing for my clients:

• All forms of “to be”: Is, Are, Am, Was, Were, Be, Being, Been
• All forms of other auxiliary verbs: Has, Have, Had, Having; Does, Do, Did, Doing
• Modal auxiliary verbs: Will, Can, May, etc.
• Pronouns: It, Its, He, Him, His, She, Her, I (of course), Me, My, We, Our, You, Your, They, Them, Their, etc.
• Relative and demonstrative pronouns: That, Which, Who, Whom; This, That, These, Those
• All parts of hyphenated terms that would be capitalized as standalone words (Twenty-First, Self-Confidence, Matter-of-Fact, Know-It-All), except when the first element is a prefix and not a full word (De-emphasizing, Co-owner, Anti-inflammatory). See CMOS 8.161 for more detail and nuance on this one, and note that the MLA handbook has a more restrictive rule for when the second element should be lowercase.

To check title case according to different style guides, you can use tools like Title Case Converter and Capitalize My Title.

With a handful of exceptions that I’ll get to in later posts (or you can just read section 13.7 in the Chicago Manual), quotations should stick to the original wording, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation of the source. When I find mistakes in quotations, often it’s just a case of incorrect copying on the author’s part, but sometimes it’s because the author ran spellcheck, grammar check, or find-and-replace on the document and accidentally applied changes to a quotation that was originally copied correctly.

Some situations where this is likely to occur if you’re not careful:

• US vs. UK spelling and grammar (-or/-our and -ize/-ise words, singular vs. plural verbs with collective nouns, etc.)
• Capitalized vs. lowercase deity pronouns in writing on Christian topics, and other examples of reverential capitalization
• Archaic spelling, grammar, or usage (e.g., in quoting the King James Bible)
• Identity terms that some writers capitalize and others don’t, or that may be capitalized or lowercase in different contexts (e.g., Black, Indigenous, Deaf)
• Other terms whose preferred form is contested and/or changing (e.g., hip-hop vs. hip hop, anti-Semitism vs. antisemitism)
• Different transliterations of names and terms (for example, if you’re writing about Sergei Prokofiev and quote an older source that refers to him as Prokofieff)

Although it takes longer, I recommend applying spellcheck and find-and-replace changes one at a time instead of globally, checking each suggested change to make sure it’s not incorrectly altering a quote.