1038. Chicago Manual of Style editors Mary Laur and Russell Harper dish on the changes they wanted in CMOS that didn't make it in, why the stylebook is bright yellow, and how a printing problem during the pandemic led to some rare editions of the manual. Plus, Mary shares her book recommendations just in time for holiday book buying.
1038. Chicago Manual of Style editors Mary Laur and Russell Harper dish on the changes they wanted in CMOS that didn't make it in, why the stylebook is bright yellow, and how a printing problem during the pandemic led to some rare editions of the manual. Plus, Mary shares her book recommendations just in time for holiday book buying.
Original full interview: https://grammar-girl.simplecast.com/episodes/chicago-18
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Mignon: Grammar Girl here. I'm Mignon Fogarty, and for the next few weeks, while we're taking a holiday break, we're going to release some of the best-of-the-best bonus episodes that people who support the show through Grammarpalooza got during this last interview season. This week, you're getting the behind-the-scenes conversations with the Chicago Manual of Style editors Russell Harper and Mary Laur, including what changes they personally wanted to make to the style guide that didn't make the cut, and Mary gives her personal book recommendations just in time with a little bit of time left for the book buying season for the holidays.
We do these kinds of extras for Grammarpalooza subscribers every time I do an interview, so almost every week. Thank you to all the current Grammarpaloozians who support the show and make this possible. If you want to sign up to be a Grammarpaloozian and support the show, you can find that information in the show notes.Â
Now we’re here for all of you bonus subscribers. Thanks so much for supporting the show. Mary and Russell, one thing I've been wondering is, was there, were there changes that you personally wanted to make that, that didn't make it in, that you got overruled or there just wasn't, wasn't room for the change, like anything like that that happened?
Mary: Well, I've been involved in the revisions of the 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th editions. And this is the first one that I have been overseeing from the very beginning. So in fact, what I would say is this is the time I finally got in all the things, or I think all the things that I've actually wanted to do for multiple editions — that change of dropping the place of publication, for example, is one that I've advocated for for at least a couple of editions. But you know, that was not the consensus. So now it was like, okay, do we want to change this? Yes, yes, we do. And I would have probably gone further. And I think Russell, we were kind of talking about going back to our famous en dash issues. There were things that I would have gone further with en dashes because I actually really love en dashes. I think it's a useful thing. And I think I would have gone further in using en dashes to signal "from-to." But again, there was some resistance to that.Â
Russell: Yeah, I totally agree.
Mary: Oh, and the, the other thing that I got in that, that hasn't really been talked about is when we talk about alphabetization principles — the word-by-word versus letter-by-letter. I've been a freelance indexer. I spent, I haven't really done any lately, but I did lots of them over the years. And it always drove me nuts that Chicago recommended letter-by-letter alphabetizing because that just didn't really make any sense to me when I would alphabetize indexes. So I was always a word-by-word person, and so I'm going to take credit for saying, uh, pushing for the idea that word-by-word should now be our preference.
So, credit or blame, I guess you can send that to me.
Mignon: That's great. I actually got a question from a listener named Rudy, who is an indexer, who asked about that. So I'm thrilled that you brought that up.
Mary: Did Rudy like it or no? Like it?
Mignon: She didn't have an opinion either way.
Mary: Okay.
Mignon: Just wanted to know why the change. It’s just Mary just wanted it.
Mary: Well, it also, it just made more sense. I mean, I'm not going to go into all the nitty gritty here, which is, you know, if you, if you've used this, these systems, you, you know what that is. But when you, when you look at it. And when you try to alphabetize, and honestly, just the way computers alphabetize things now. It's not exactly word-by-word, but it pretty much is word-by-word.
And again, why would we insist on an arcane, more arcane way of doing this when most people are just going to let their computer sort it anyway.
Mignon: I also heard from translators who are happy that translators are now required to acknowledge the translator on the, I think the title page, is that right?
Russell: Required or in I think the title page we did. We were conscious of that. And I, we at least encourage it. We may, uh, I'm not sure if we have the authority to require it, but I think we have much stronger language for that. Don't quite remember, but I was not aware that it wouldn't, I would have thought it would always go on the title page.
So we might've also said something about the cover. This time, do you remember Mary?
Mary: I definitely think we've focused on it more than we did in the past. So, yeah.
Mignon: Yeah, translators are getting, being encouraged, being, uh, you are encouraging people to acknowledge translators more than in the past, which is greatly appreciated by the translating world.
Mary: I think one thing that I would say is already in my CMOS 19 folder. There was recently a LitHub post about, you know, shouldn't all the members of the book team get more acknowledgements, like even on the copyright page, I mean, they're often acknowledged in the acknowledgements. But the idea of like listing who's the, who's the copy editor, who's the designer, et cetera. We sort of vaguely hinted, you know, the copyright page is a place where those kinds of credits can appear. But I would say one of the things I'm looking forward to in 19 is, uh, maybe pushing for that to be a more standard feature of copyright pages, because I think it's really important to give all the members of the team their due.
Mignon: Absolutely. And now let's talk about the color change. My roots are in the red Chicago Manual Style, and it's been blue for a couple of editions now, and suddenly it's yellow, and it is bright yellow. I've seen people talking about the color of the book. So, why the change?
What are the, what's the thinking behind the bright-as-the-sun yellow?
Mary: Well, first of all, in case anyone's curious, the specific color, if you want to match it to your clothing or anything like that is Pantone 395. So you can, you can make a note of that. But yeah, the yellow is actually a surprise to the team too. When the book designer, who's my colleague, Isaac Tobin from our design department, first routed the cover design back in January, it felt right to all of us immediately. I have to say, nobody really pushed back against it. He picked the color because we had talked very much about how this was the most significant revision that we've published in the generation. And by that, I mean, the 15th edition in 2003, which was the very first one that I worked on.
And we really wanted the cover, the website, all the marketing materials that go with it to really, again, reinforce the idea that this was a very changed edition. So I don't know how many people have actually seen the cover. See, this doesn't even, the color doesn't even come through..
Mignon: Yeah, Mary’s holding it and it is brighter than that.
Mary: Yeah, so and it's the third primary color. That was another thing, you know, that we've already used red and blue. But it has appeared on, as a spot color on, on a few previous editions, so it's not a complete break with the past. I'd also like to point out, I'll hold it, I'll hold it up again. Uh, the elegant and streamlined cover design.
The type design of the and let everybody know that the title and the edition number are in a custom designed font that Isaac pulled together and he has named this font “Sea Moss,”, S E A M O S S. So, um, that is, uh, a little fun fact about, um, about the cover. And one more thing, which is that, you know, the, uh, the, the cloth that the book is wrapped in, uh, is the, still the traditional warm red cloth that we've used. That's been the standard for several editions. But here's another fun piece of trivia for people who are hanging around for this segment. Back during the supply chain disruptions of the summer of 2021, we had an occasion where we had to reprint the, uh, the 17th edition. So, we needed to print 20,000 copies, but we discovered that the red cloth that we normally use to cover the books was not available in that quantity. So we wanted to do a 20,000-copy printing. So, this decision we made was to do the printing of the copies, but we only bound 5,000 of them, and we bound them in black.Â
Mignon: Collectors editions.
Mary: Yeah, so we used, so somewhere out there, there were 5,000 copies that were printed and bound with black cloth. And you know once the cloth came back into stock, we bound up the rest. And so, it's really just that small little interim binding that we did. But, if anyone out there happens to come across a black cloth version of the 17th edition. I don't know. I'm not the one who sets the value.
Mignon: Yeah, that’s amazing. That could be worth something someday.
Russell: Third printing, right, Mary?
Mary: I'm not sure if that was the one. I trust you if that's what you remember.
Russell: That's what I oh, yes, it is. It is. It is the third. But of course, as I said, we actually, we printed the pages, um, for 20,000 copies of the third printing, but we only bound the first 5,000 in black, and then we bound the rest in red. So 25%.
Mary: t's a very small sliver of the 17th edition copies that are floating around out there, but…
Very cool. Yeah, it's funny that it's really cool that you have a font named after the style books. And I'm noticing, I always call it CMOS. So when you were calling it CMOS through the interview, I was like, oh, that's not how I would say it, but it's really lovely actually. It's evocative of the ocean, you know? Wonderful. And there's merch. So, uh, maybe you get a beach bag for Seamoss, a Seamoss beach bag. And the one that really jumped out at me though was the skateboard. You can get a Seamoss skateboard. What's the thinking behind that? Have you sold any? Do you know?
Well, that I'm not sure about, but the credit for all of the stuff that's in the merch store and a lot of the sort of swag that you can get if you happen to come to one of the conferences that we attend, that's all the work of our colleague, Jenny Ringbloom, who's the marketing manager, who's in charge of the Manual of Style. So that's all her genius in coming up with these things.
And she told us to tell you that there are both red and blue skateboards currently, and there will be a yellow one soon. So if you're looking for that, it will be available. Of course, the merch store has lots of other stuff, T-shirts, sweatshirts, tote bags, mugs, all of that. And we've definitely, she wears it all the time.
And she said it's really fun to get compliments walking around town, wearing a CMOS logo. And I think we've all kind of had that experience. I was in a grocery store during the pandemic and wearing one of our Chicago Manual of Style cloth masks before we realized, well, this is really, you should really use an N95, but someone in the grocery store, not in Chicago, I might add, complimented me on my mask.
So it is fun to have that stuff.
Mignon: Yeah, it'd definitely be a way to sort of find your people out in the world, out in the wild. So we're going to wrap up this section. I am, I always ask the guests for book recommendations and this can be anything. So I'd love what are, share some of your favorite books with our listeners and book recommendations.
Mary: Russell, were you going to let me handle this one?
Russell: I'm going to let you handle that one because I was going to have to admit that for the last year, as we've been getting everything wrapped up and checking and double-checking everything, from the website to the pages, my reading has fallen, I'm not reading like I normally do, so I'm going to leave this one to Mary.
Mignon: Yeah, I know how that is. Sometimes I only get reading in through audiobooks, uh, while I'm doing something else. You get too busy, but yeah, so, um, so Mary, help us out with some wonderful books to read in the future.
Mary: Okay, so, again, I, I'm going to hold some of these up for the people who are looking at this and not just listening to it. Uh, the, I would say hands down the best book that I've read in 2024 is the book "Challenger" by Adam Higginbotham. This is about the before, during, and after of the Challenger space shuttle explosion in 1986.
I was 16 when that happened, and it was one of, certainly one of the JFK moments of my generation. So, of course, you know, first and foremost, I just wanted to learn about what happened, but the story is so well constructed and told, and the research is so, uh, extensive and meticulously documented, and I'll point out there are 74 pages at the back of the book that are Chicago style end notes and bibliography, which I always like to see that. You know, it always reminds me that CMOS and a lot of the other books about writing, editing, and publishing that I published for the press give people the tools to produce things like this.
So that makes me feel like sort of indirectly contributing to things like this. And although I'm a big nonfiction reader, my other two recommendations are both fiction. One of them is "Damnation Spring" by Ash Davidson, which I admit I part picked because I just absolutely loved the cover design. But this is a novel about a family and a community in the Redwoods country of Northern California in the late 1970s and how they were affected by environmental poisons. This is one of those books that I just didn't want to end, and I'm still sort of haunted by the actual ending.Â
And finally, "Deacon King Kong" by James McBride. This is a book that I picked up because it was recommended so highly by the bookseller characters in Louise Erdrich's book, "The Sentence." And obviously it was recommended by Louise Erdrich, and I think those characters were right. I was really delighted by how funny the book was in spite of its ostensible subject matter. And so now of course I'm working my way through his other books although I'm trying to pace myself a little bit.
Mignon: Yeah. What is the subject matter?
Mary: It's about, it's set in New York City. And again, in 1969, weirdly it's set right about the time I was born. Maybe that's part of the appeal, but basically the time when drugs were starting to come into some of the housing projects and you know, it was about a shooting and there is, there is some violence, but it's really more about community and people and how there were these bonds across, um, different parts of the community and how that was sustaining to everyone.
I think that's what, you know, James McBride is really known for those kinds of stories. His newer book is the "Heaven and Earth Grocery Store." I'm sort of, I'm holding off on that one. I like to spread it out a little bit because when I like someone, I'm like, well, there's not an endless number of books by this person.
So, I'll give myself a few months, and then I'll pick up another one. So,
Mignon: Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you again so much, Mary Laur, which rhymes with flower,
Mary: Yes.
Mignon: And Russell Harper from the Chicago Manual of Style, which I will now call "Seamoss." I love the Chicago Manual of Style, and I know a lot of my listeners do too. It's been just an absolute treat to hear behind the scenes how this edition came out.
Thank you so much.
Mary: Thank you.
Russell: Thank you.
Mignon: I hope you enjoyed that bonus segment. If you didn't catch the full interview back in September, you can find it in your feed or linked too in the show notes. And thank you again to the Grammarpaloozians for supporting the show and making the bonuses possible. And if you'd like to become a Grammarpaloozian and get all the bonus episodes and more importantly show your appreciation for the show, you can do it right in Apple Podcasts in the show listing if that’s where you're listening right now, and if not, you can find information about how to do it other ways in the show notes or at QuickAndDirtyTips.com/bonus.
That's all. Thanks for listening.