20.  FAQs on Grammar & Style.     

  Unit 9 referred to The Chicago Manual, which is an authoritative guide to American English style.  Here are some of questions & answers taken from the online column at: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/cmosfaq.html#2

	New Edition: Q. Before I buy a copy of the CMS, could you please tell me when the next edition will be coming out? A. Editions have historically been about a decade apart, and the most recent appeared in 1993, so our "millennial edition" will probably appear very early in the next century, perhaps in 2002.
	E-mail: Q.  "The Chicago Manual of Style does not inform one of the proper convention for documentation of e-mail messages. A. The style for citing personal correspondence is detailed in CMS 15.267. There is no need to give an e-mail address in citing a letter delivered by computer, just as there is no need to give a street address when citing a letter delivered by the U.S. mail. If there is a reason you need to identify the letter as an electronic one, simply say so, for example: Bill Gates, electronic letter [or e-mail message] to author, April 10, 1998.
	More E-mail: Q. Should a sentence that ends with a Web-site address end with a period that is not part of the address? I am concerned that people who are not familiar with how URLs work might have trouble finding a site if they assume that the final period is part of the address.  A. If it is important to set off a URL from surrounding text, you can use angle brackets: <http://www.press.uchicago.edu>.
	WWW Citation: Q. What is the standard bibliographical citation form for articles taken from the World Wide Web, or for information taken from home pages? A. There is currently very limited Chicago Press style for on-line citations. Please see below for an answer to this frequently asked question and for references to electronic style guides. Another guide, A Reference Guide to Using Internet Sources (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997). Online! also has a Web site where you can post questions, at http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/online/.
	Techno-babble: Q. Should the word "pre-dewatering" be hyphenated? A. I reckon hyphenatin's too good for a word like "pre-dewatering," though it surely ought to be put out of its misery somehow.      Seriously, we tend to be suspicious of words beginning with "pre-," which seem to be proliferating lately. What is the difference, after all, between presliced bread and plain sliced bread?      If what you want to say is "before dewatering," then you can use the word "before." If you are tempted to say "pre-" because you want to use the phrase to modify another noun (e.g., in the pre-dewatering period), then you can rephrase to avoid the problem (in the period before dewatering).
	Acroynms: Q.  Abbreviations in the copy: "A WBS displays. . . ." I believe the correct way to provide the missing information to clarify the abbreviation is the following: "A W[ork] B[reakdown] S[tructure] displays. . . ." However, she believes it should read: "A WBS [Work Breakdown Structure] displays. . . ." Can you please clarify which is correct. A. Either way is fine, but the second version is easier to read, and more clearly introduces the reader to the abbreviation WBS. It is indeed our practice to place the information in brackets after the item we want to clarify, as in your second version. In some cases, this means that the abbreviation will follow in parentheses: "A Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) . . ."
	Italics: Q. Italic fonts in some word processors lean so far over that it seems as if the italicized word and the next unitalicized word run together to make one word. If a second space were placed after the italic word, it would be clearer. A. Since CMS is geared toward the preparation of manuscripts for publication, which usually means that the manuscript will go to a typesetter in the form of a disk file, we cannot advise adding the extra space, which would show up in the page proof as (guess what?) an extra space.
	Sentence Spacing: Q. This question relates to the number of spaces after a period ending a sentence. Monospaced "typewriter" style calls for two spaces; proportional spaced "typeset" calls for only one. Yet as we make a transition away from typewriters to proportional spacing on computers, is there a rule as to how many spaces you should put after a period ending a sentence? A. All our electronic manuscripts are prepared with a single space between sentences, since typesetting does not require the extra space, which is merely a typewriter convention.
	Online, E-mail: Q. How does the University of Chicago Press treat the term "on line"? Is it "on line," "on-line," or "online"? And what about "e-mail," "E-mail," and "email"? A. We rely a great deal on Webster's. Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition, uses a hyphen: on-line. (At least a few Chicago editors favor "online" and hope the next edition of the Collegiate will kill the hyphen.) Webster's 10th lists "E-mail," but most of us here prefer to lowercase, "e-mail." As always, what matters most is that the style remain consistent throughout a given document.
	Internet, Website: Q. Do you write "Internet" or "internet"? "website" or Web site"? A. CMS has not established a standard, but is waiting a while for the dust to settle on these questions. For now, most of us prefer to uppercase Internet and Web in all instances and we spell "Web site" as an open compound (but hyphenate "Web-site" as an adjective).
	Split Infinitives: Q. I just spoke with a San Francisco newspaper columnist who cited CMS as his justification for one of the worst examples I've seen of a split infinitive. When I called him to express my concern, he became irate, stating, "That is an outdated rule, and the latest edition of the Chicago Manual of Style says it's optional." A. We believe that dictating inflexible guidelines in areas where there is little justification for them would probably result in many more instances of poor writing.
	Math: Q. Is it acceptable to begin a sentence with a mathematical variable? A.  We would tolerate it if avoiding it created awkwardness or ambiguity.
	There's: Q. What is your opinion of the contraction "there's" for "there has"? A sample sentence is "There's been an explosion of scientific knowledge." A. Seems fine to me. The on-line concordance to Shakespeare shows 401 occurrences, so it must have crept in some time ago.
	"That": He insists on leaving in or adding unnecessary "thats," even if the other editors feel they bog down the sentences. Example: I had a sentence that read, "It is important for mental health workers to understand the vital role companion animals play in their clients' lives." Per his choice, it now reads, "It is important for mental health workers to understand the vital role that companion animals play in their clients' lives." I know it's not incorrect to add the "thats," but I believe they make the text sound sloppy. What do you think? A. You're right; it is a personal choice, and among the editors here you probably wouldn't get a consensus in many cases. I myself find the opposite practice annoying, when that is omitted in sentences like "The agents reported substantial delays took place at the station." The reader stumbles, taking delays as the object of reported rather than as the subject of another clause. (Newspaper editors are the least tolerant of the optional that—I challenge you to find one in the Chicago Tribune.) I always add a that when such ambiguity exists, and I tend to like the sound of it in any case.
	Prepositions: Q. Is it appropriate to end a sentence with a preposition? A. The old rule was long ago abandoned by most usage manuals and grammar police. In my own writing, I no longer try to avoid ending with a preposition.
	Web Addresses: Q. Have you established any rules for breaking Web addresses at ends of lines? I would be inclined to break at the slash where possible, with no hyphen (keeping the address intact), but what about the "dots"? Example: eic.edu.gov.on.ca/html/dsbmaps.html. A. Your instincts are the same as ours—that breaking after a slash is preferable. Breaking a URL after a dot (leaving what looks like a period at the end of a line) might cause difficulties for the reader. It would be better to place the dot at the beginning of the next line. Using a hyphen to break a long word at the end of a line is not a good idea, since some URLs contain hyphens as part of the address. Instead, break the word between syllables but omit the hyphen. You might also consider setting off URLs in a special way (e.g., with angle brackets < >).
	Capitals: A. CMS does not capitalize "biblical," and hasn't as far back as I can check in our library here (the 11th edition, 1949), so I don't think we can consider this a recent change. Although I'm sure some publications, especially religious ones, would cap it as part of their house style, CMS tends to lowercase whenever possible. We lowercase the president, the pope, and the queen—words that you will often see capped elsewhere. Even when we uppercase a proper noun, like Congress or Senate, we might lowercase the adjective: congressional or senatorial.
	Gender: Q. I would swear that I saw a reference in your latest manual that approved of the use of "their" instead of a gender-biased singular pronoun. For example, "If the user has completed installing the program, they should put the CD-ROM back in the package," instead of "If the user has completed installing the program, s/he should put the CD-ROM back in the package," but on your on-line FAQ, you dance around the answer to the question and suggest that you do NOT approve of the singular "their." Can you tell us what is acceptable? A. Yes, you saw it at 2.98 (note 9), but there is some regret at having written it and we may change our minds in the next edition. I personally would rather avoid this usage, but occasionally it's so difficult to find a way around it that I take comfort in this note of approval and rather dread its removal. (I should add, however, that we will do almost anything to avoid using "s/he.")
	More Gender: Q. PLEASE tell me what you are recommending when people need a gender-neutral singular possessive pronoun. In order to avoid saying "his mind" or "her mind" (or, God forbid, "his/her mind") people are saying "their mind."   A. I'm afraid your gender-neutral pronoun (at least in the sense you need) does not exist in our lexicon. I agree that the plural pronoun with a singular noun seems inadequate; I would suggest that you recast the sentence altogether or at least make "mind" plural for agreement: their minds. Other writers alternate between using "his" and "her" in such constructions in order to give equal status to each pronoun.
	Numbers: Q. I can't quite seem to figure out whether I should use spelled-out numbers or numerals with units of time—for example, seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years. I am not sure whether it should be "2 to 4 weeks" or "two to four weeks"; "30 years" or "thirty years"; etc. I think for numbers over 99, numerals are used, for example "230 seconds." I understand that numerals should be used with units of measure in general, like kg, cm, °C, and °F, etc. Thank you for your help. A. For units of time (or any other measure) in nontechnical text, we like to spell out numbers up to a hundred: "The cake burned in forty-one minutes." If, however, in a given paragraph the same time unit involves a mixture of numbers under and over one hundred, we style them all the same: "Ten runners clocked in at 94 minutes, and forty-three more finished in 101 minutes." (Note that the numbers of runners are not changed to numerals because in that category there is no inconsistency in styling them according to the rule.)      Numerals are always used with abbreviated measures like the ones you list; and in technical or statistical texts, numerals are used even when measures are spelled out. Sometimes even nontechnical text will have a passage containing many numerical references, in which case the editor might decide to use numerals for all in order to save space and prevent what might seem to be inconsistencies. See CMS, chapter 8, for a detailed discussion.
	Commas for a series: Q.  In the sentence "I went to the store to buy eggs, milk and cheese" do you put a comma after "milk"? What is the standard now for comma usage after the second-to-last item? I have seen such sentences both with and without the comma. Thanks. A. Chicago style is to put a comma there (it's called a "serial" comma).
	Hyphens: Q. A coeditor and I have a difference of opinion with regard to the following as it relates to "spare use" of hyphens. I maintain that hyphens are necessary because both words together modify the noun that follows. My coeditor thinks they aren't needed. Can you settle the debate? Here are some examples: "IBM-based software" or "IBM based software" "End-user documentation" or "end user documentation" A. Yes, I would use hyphens in both of your examples. Otherwise the first phrase could be taken as a noun-verb-object clause, and in the second phrase "end" could be read as a verb. We don't object to hyphens, but rather avoid a proliferation of unneeded hyphens—it's more a house aesthetic than a rule. One unfortunate trend is to hyphenate adverb-adjective modifiers: "a barely-noticeable smudge." Another bugbear is the hyphenation of an entire descriptive passage: "He loved to use the throwing-the-baby-out-with-the-bath-water metaphor." Our point is really just that writers should think about their use of hyphens rather than stick them in mindlessly. In the last example, the writer could either put quotation marks around the metaphor or rephrase entirely.
	Which, Who, That: Q. My question relates to the proper use of the comma when using a subordinate clause introduced by the pronoun "which" or "who." My impression is that a comma to set off the clause is proper sometimes but not always. For example, if I say, "I have a car which has four doors," a comma introducing the clause is not appropriate. However, if I say, "My car, which has four doors, is blue," the comma is proper. I am not quite sure how to articulate the rule for when the comma is proper and when not.  A. Your instincts are right about the comma for nonrestrictive clauses: that is, clauses that are not necessary to the meaning of the sentence but are parenthetical. A good test is to put parentheses around the clause in question and see if any meaning is lost: if there is any change in the gist of the sentence, then you should not use the commas. When the clause is restrictive (that is, restricting or modifying the meaning of the subject, rather than simply adding to it), it is properly followed not by "which" but by "that": I have a car that has four doors. Although this rule has now been relaxed almost out of existence, if you can get used to using "which" and "that" correctly, then you can follow the somewhat oversimplified guideline that "which" takes a comma.
	Documents on Disk: Q. The CMS gives guidelines for formatting a manuscript, but it doesn't give detailed instructions for preparing the disk files for submission. Does Chicago prefer to have manuscripts submitted on disk, and are guidelines available? A. U of C Press definitely wants your disks! Almost all our manuscripts are now edited electronically. Our favorite guidelines are those of the Association of American University Presses, which can be found at http://aaup.uchicago.edu/emsprep.html. The University Press of Virginia also has prepared detailed tips at http://www.upress.virginia.edu/ about/authorinfo.html. Both of these tip sheets stress the importance of minimal formatting and informed use of one's word processing program.

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