5 Changes That Matter From The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Edition

In a guide like The Chicago Manual of Style, published in 18 editions since 1906, updates tend to be incremental. For example, the first edition advised printers to use an em space between sentences, which was reduced to an en space in 1925 (8th ed.), which in turn gave way to a regular space, or about a third of an em, in 1949 (11th ed.). Typists were taught to emulate that extra prewar-era space by pressing the space bar twice, a habit that some still practice even today.

(Beware the Don’t-Do-This Brigade.)

But not all rules are as noticeable to readers (or as controversial) as the amount of space between sentences. And in a Manual that now runs to more than 1,000 pages in print, many of the finer points are bound to go unnoticed by anyone not specifically looking for them.

Large or small, each update for each new edition has one of two goals: (a) to improve an existing rule, either in light of new information or to register a shift in how things are usually done, or (b) to add new (and sometimes overlooked) content. Both goals are pursued in the same general spirit of bringing the Manual up to date for our audience of writers, editors, publishers, and others who work with words.

From Style to Substance

Each update in the Manual is significant in some way, but here are five that matter more than most.

1. Prepositions in titles of works. 

Readers are used to seeing shorter prepositions lowercased in titles, as the word of in Leaves of Grass, the title of the 19th-century poetry collection by Walt Whitman. Newspapers, Wikipedia, and most other places both online and off typically follow either a three- or a four-letter limit for such words—that is, capitalizing any preposition longer than for or with. Chicago’s advice to lowercase prepositions in titles “regardless of length,” as first clarified explicitly in the 12th edition (1969), was starting to look dated. 

Not only could we no longer justify writing A River Runs through It (the title of a 1970s story collection by Norman Maclean, in which a preposition happens to be the longest word), but who would object to the second capital A in Much Ado About Nothing? For the 18th edition, Chicago has therefore adopted a four-letter limit, a change that should make life easier for editors who follow Chicago style.

2. An initial “The” in the name of a periodical. 

Until now, the Manual always said to treat an initial definite article in the name of a newspaper or magazine as part of the surrounding text, as in “the New York Times.” But as its masthead shows (both in print and online), that paper’s name includes the The, something today’s writers and editors should have little trouble confirming. And just as Chicago has always deferred to the title page of a book for the presence or absence of an initial article—for example, writing The Chicago Manual of Style (initial The) but the MLA Handbook (no initial The)—we now recommend a similar approach for periodicals. 

So we now advise referring to The New York Times (or, in shortened form, the Times, not to be confused with The Times [UK]) but, for example, the Chicago Tribune. Any extra time spent looking things up can be recouped when it comes to source citations, where an initial The in such titles can be omitted (as before).

3. Place of publication. 

Source citations for books have included the place of publication (usually a city), which traditionally appears on the title page, for as long as the Manual has been published. Accordingly, a footnote would cite the 17th edition of the Manual as follows (note the word “Chicago” at the beginning of the parentheses): 1. The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017). 

Most other guides have eliminated that requirement in recent years, and now we have also. If the place is important (and not obvious from the publisher’s name), an author can ask to make an exception—or simply mention it in the text. Meanwhile, the many editors and authors alike who advocated for this change will breathe a sigh of relief.

4. Singular “they.” 

Chicago foresaw the value of the singular they more than 30 years ago, in the 14th edition (1993), stating in a footnote that “the University of Chicago Press recommends the ‘revival’ of the singular use of they and their,” citing usage by Austen and Shakespeare (among others). Thirty-one years later, the Manual has endorsed singular they explicitly—and not just in a footnote. 

Not only does the new edition once again cover referential singular they (which can refer to people who don’t identify with either he or she), but we now more fully acknowledge the value of the generic singular they for referring to someone whose gender is unknown or irrelevant or must be concealed for reasons of privacy. Anyone who knows their pronouns from their antecedents (see how that works?) will appreciate having this tool in their editorial arsenal.

5. Indigenous languages and sources. 

Chicago has long included a chapter on languages other than English that are commonly encountered by academic writers working in an otherwise English-language context. Most of this coverage (which now extends to more than 30 languages) is limited to special characters and other typographic considerations in addition to conventions for capitalization and quotations. 

But for this edition, with the help of experts, we’ve not only added Indigenous languages to our list but also, to complement this new coverage, advice on citing Indigenous sources of knowledge. We hope that writers and editors will come away with a greater understanding of what to consider when working with sources by or about Indigenous peoples.

All of us who worked on the 18th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style hope that writers, editors, and anyone else who works with words will benefit from these and all the other updates and refinements in the 18th edition. For a detailed list, see “What’s New in the 18th Edition” at CMOS Online.

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