(The Subversive Copy Editor)
(The Subversive Copy Editor)
Your author website probably has a nice banner image, and if you blog, you probably look online for eye-catching artwork to illustrate or decorate your posts or pages. Maybe your About page features a professional headshot or images from book…
In our Fiction+ series, we set out to help CMOS users adapt Chicago style to creative writing contexts. Sometimes, Chicago’s general guidelines already work just fine; other times, they need a little noodge to sit comfortably on a page of fiction. And…
Editors are never happy. First they throw a fit if you send in a manuscript without page numbers, but once you send them a paginated work, they complain when you try to discuss a sentence on page 67. What’s the…
When we think about writing numbers, we tend to think of research papers, financial reports, sports columns, and other quantity-laden nonfiction settings. But novelists and playwrights and poets also puzzle over how to style numbers. Some happily leave such matters…
Although I officially retired from my work at the Chicago Manual in December, I couldn’t say no to an opportunity to continue hanging around the CMOS Online Shop Talk blog when Russell Harper—the new editor—invited me to share a new…
The most mind-numbing job I ever had was in an insurance company filing papers—carts full of policies to put in numerical order, hour after hour, 1064952, 2586027, 1943902, 1064951. The only thing that kept me awake was the occasional paper cut.…
Everyone has at least one friend, relative, or colleague who is not yet competent in even the most basic computer tasks: creating a document, e-mailing, browsing online.
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Today I have tips for disposing of two tasks in mere seconds. While less savvy writers and editors are laboring over for the same chores for hours, we can go dancing!
A few months ago I encountered a bank of hotel elevators that made a big impression on me. This might be old hat to you,* but to me it was a wondrous invention: there were no buttons inside the elevators for choosing your floor. Instead,
Have you ever been put out of a cab after you ever waited forever and finally lassoed one and got in and after sailing past a street where you would have turned (if you had been driving), said, “Shouldn’t you have turned there?” and the driver slammed to the curb and said, “You can get another cab,” leaving you incredulously asking, “What—? Are you kidding? Are you putting me out?” and, seeing his face, had to grab your things and slam the door (cab drivers hate that) and hike back four blocks to the thoroughfare and wait for another cab? Me, too.