Literary Agent Mary Keeley Presents: "Grammar Shrammar" (a peek inside the newest Chicago Manual of Style!)

 Good morning, Seekerville, and help me to welcome Mary Keeley, the newest addition to  Books & Such Literary. Mary joined Books & Such as an agent in 2010. She had been a non-fiction acquisitions editor for Tyndale House. Books & Such Literary  includes Janet Grant, owner/founder, Vice-President Wendy Lawton, and agents Rachel Kent (nee Zurakowski) and Mary Keeley. There's coffee in the back room and a full breakfast spread awaits you while you chat up grammar do's and don'ts (that was a DON'T) with Mary!

At the recent 2011 EPA Convention in Chicago, Ruth Goring, editor at the University of Chicago Press, led a workshop on changes in The Chicago Manual of Style: 16^th Edition. Why is this topic so important that an entire workshop at the EPA Convention was dedicated to it? While just a few grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors in your proposal can render it dead in the water before an editor or agent ever reaches the manuscript, using the latest style guidelines can communicate your professionalism as a writer and commitment to your craft.

The guiding force in making changes was consistency. There are also additions since the last edition that revolve around electronic issues. With this in mind, I’m going to highlight some of the more notable changes in the 16^th Edition in a simple list by their numerical address. Disclaimer: this is not a complete list; you’ll have to purchase the book or subscribe to the online version for that. But you can save the following quick list for easy reference.

CMS 16 Edition Changes

6.119      Commas following other punctuation marks are now allowed.

7.16, 17, or 18    Possessives. To maintain consistency, it was decided that possessives of all names, including names like Jesus and Moses, will end in ‘s (Jesus’s, Moses’s).

7.76     Website is now one word (website), and worldwide web is capitalized (Worldwide Web).

8.136   Rulings for styling websites. Roman for name of organization (www.booksandsuch.biz); italic for title of book (www.365mostimportantbiblepassagesforwomen.com).

8.159   Ordinals and compound numbers. When the first word needs to be capitalized (as in the beginning of a sentence), both words are capitalized (First Century, One-Fourth).

8.55     When referring to a specific mountain, river, street, etc., both/all words are capitalized (Chicago River, Illinois River, Blue Ridge Mountains).

8.153   Brand names don’t need to follow standard capitalization style (ebay, iPod).

 8.157   Principles of headline style capitalization. Lower-case prepositions regardless of length or importance (A River Runs through It).

Chapter 5: the grammar chapter:

5.9 (and 5.220)     Mass nouns followed by a prepositional phrase. The definite or indefinite article preceding a mass noun + prepositional phrase indicates if the mass noun or the number of the noun in the prepositional phrase controls the verb form. If a definite article (the) precedes, the mass noun controls, and usually a singular verb is used (the quantity of coins saved this year has increased.) If an indefinite article (a or an) precedes, then the number of the noun in the prepositional phrase controls (a small percentage of coins are added each month.)

14.7  Access dates. Access dates are now allowed if no publication date is available. 

5.220  There is a great list of word combinations to watch out for. Example: close proximity. This is noted as redundant.

2.133  Checklist for proofing electronic publications. Also includes how to communicate those proofing changes on an electronic file.

11.2  Extended introduction to unicoding (for international characters across electronic platforms.)

 15.2  Uniform treatment in author date references and notes and bibliography. CMS now recommends a uniform treatment for the main elements of citation. Use authors’ full names rather than initials. Headline style capitalization for titles or works are now identical in the author-date system.

Here are three references you might find helpful to have in your library:

1. The Editorium (www.editorium.com). A company that sells macros.  You can purchase “File Cleaner,” which cleans up punctuation and simple grammar errors. Purchase a yearly subscription for $30.
2. Guidelines for Fair Use. Go to www.press.uchicago.edu to download a PDF file.
3. Go to www.press.uchicago.edu to get Manuscript Preparation Guidelines (also includes author permission guidelines).

 The CMS editors aren’t fundamentalists about following their style. Each publisher has its own adapted style, which the editors wouldn’t expect new authors to know. But that’s a reason to follow the CMS for proposals and manuscripts because it is a universal starting point.