We regularly go to Chicago…
By Francis Moran
The Chicago Manual of Style, that is. And, believe it or not, it’s often quite the humorous journey.
Those of you who are regular readers of this blog will know that we take considerable pride in being word nerds, and that strong, effective and precise writing is the hallmark of our work here at inmedia. But even the best and most practised of us needs to refer to an unimpeachable expert every now and then. We make heavy use of dictionairies — my Pocket Oxford Dictionary has been my desk-side companion through four decades, and its missing spine and dog-eared appearance is testimony to my continued reliance on it — as well as style guides such as CP Style Book, and all the online tools we can get our cursors to.
The best of these is the Chicago Manual of Style, or simply Chicago, as its devotees call it. We regularly go to Chicago, if you will, to check the finer points of grammar and punctuation and settle the very occasional difference of opinion that might crop up here between writer and editor.
As subscribers to the online edition of this style guide, we get monthly emails listing questions that have been put to its editors by readers. They reply with a certainty and conviction that is reassuring, while maintaining a cheeky sense of humour; many of their answers are good for a chuckle.
Take this recent exchange, for example:
Q. The assistant editor of my local newspaper wrote the following sentence in a column: “My parents had my little brother and I later in life.” I said I believe it should be “my brother and me.” She remains adamant that she is correct and referred me to your book. How is this possible?
A. It’s not possible; she’s flat-out wrong. (And we rarely say that anything is flat-out wrong.) Ask her if she would write “My parents had I.”
Or these two that had the word nerd in me chuckling:
Q. I’m going to have signs made for the tennis courts at my rather academic club. I want one of them to say something like this:
Tennis Players:
1. Please sign in at front desk.
2. Groom your court after play.
Thank you.
I have lots of questions! Is it fine in an application like this to omit articles to save space? How should I capitalize and punctuate? Is it awkward to have a list like that? I wanted to make it absolutely clear to the reader that he has TWO duties (that is, I don’t want him to stop reading one long sentence and not register his second duty).
A. It’s easy to answer when the writer already has everything down just fine. It’s all fine—really! Sticklers might think that having “your” would mean you have to have “the” to be parallel, but I would argue that “your” isn’t optional and that adding “the” on a sign like this isn’t necessary or even conventional. Maybe you could have another sign pointing that out, just in case.
And:
Q. In a technical proposal, would you say “400-ton-per-day scrubber” or “400-tons-per-day scrubber”? Thanks a bunch!
A. The first construction is the more usual one. (Btw, what is a 400-ton-per-day scrubber, exactly? And where can I get one?)
Who says grammar can’t be fun?
