Talk:The Chicago Manual of Style

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[edit] Citation format examples

Why not give an example of this citation method but I suppose there are too many different kinds of citation to list here or something?--Fredmaack 09:40, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I second the motion!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.232.126.123 (talk • contribs) 08:41, 4 May 2006
See http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html for some examples. There are also some examples on my user page (I copy, paste, and the edit the code from my user page when I add citations to articles). --Safalra 11:40, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] CMS is not obsolete

While CMS has far more competition than in the past, it is still alive and kicking. In the academic world, it's most prominent in historical journals - see the American Anthropological Association and the Organization of American Historians. It's also still widely cited as a general style guide; see Wikipedia's Manual of Style for example -Redguardian

[edit] "Criticism" section

This section doesn't make much sense as written. It seems to be referring to a method of citing other works, or something like that, but even that isn't clear. The CMS is an extremely comprehensive book, and you need to tell us what part of it you're talking about. Lou Sander 05:45, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I concur. I'm going to put a {{fact}} tag up for now. If we don't hear back from the original author of the material in that section -- who is probably gone, see Special:Contributions/Wokilemil -- we should probably just remove it. --Cultural Freedom talk 2006-07-01 07:23 (UTC)

[edit] isn't style more general that formating?

The current article states "Note that, in the field of publishing, style means punctuation, italicizing, bolding, capitalization, tables, and so forth; not prose style." Isn't that too restrictive? Don't style manuals actually say some things about wording, such as 'avoiding sexist language'? I won't change this myself, because I'm really not too familair with the subject. ike9898 21:16, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

True. And CMS goes on to discuss other publishing things (e.g., barcodes). —Ben FrantzDale 22:02, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
Because it is definitely true that publishing deals with not just the physical formatting, grammar and punctuation, but also prose style, including things like clarity of prose, organization, gender-neutral language, flow, documentation, plagiarism, etc., I have edited out the following section.
       (Note that, in the field of publishing, style means punctuation, italicizing, 
        bolding, capitalization, tables, and so forth; not prose style.)

[Grrr...I know I'm signed in, but my signature isn't showing up. I'll try again. ]Cyg-nifier 14:21, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reverted disam link back into article

Someone removed the disam link for Chicago (disambiguation) from this article. FYI, the disam page does link to Chicago Manual of Style, which is why I placed a cross-link to that disam. Normally if an article is specifically listed on the disambiguation page, a cross-reference is also provided in the article.

Hope that clears up why I put it in. If there's disagreement, though, feel free to discuss it here and go with the consensus (don't remove without discussing though, thanks). Dugwiki 14:53, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Listing The Chicago Manual of Style on Chicago (disambiguation) makes sense, because it is sometimes abbreviated to "Chicago". Linking to Chicago (disambiguation) here, however, makes no sense. 'Cross-referencing' of disambiguation pages isn't normal, and if it occurs, it's probably wrong. The purpose of disambiguation is to "resolve ambiguity"; there is no ambiguity in "The Chicago Manual of Style". Linking to Chicago (disambiguation) would be merited if "Chicago" redirected here, but it doesn't. There isn't a reasonable situation in which someone would arrive at this narrow page but be looking for the completely broad "Chicago". Here are examples analagous to this one where this 'cross-referencing' practice is rightly not used:
To follow up on the above comment, I double checked in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages) and Wikipedia:Disambiguation and I can't find anything specifically one way or another whether or when to include links to disam pages on articles. It doesn't say to ONLY link the main article to the disam, nor does it say to link ALL articles or almost all articles. So unfortunately I can't find any "official" style reference to use here.
Now that being said, I think there is reasonable justification for, in general, including a link to the disam page unless there's a good reason not to. It's possible, for example, for a user to reach a specific page using the Search function and accidentally going to the wrong page. For example, if you Search for "Chicago", you get a list of articles with "Chicago" in the title. The first one, (334) Chicago, is an asteroid named after the city. A user who clicks on that first link would go to the asteroid article, and probably want to go from there to a different Chicago article. The easiest way to get the user to the other articles in that case is to provide a link directly to the disam page, since it is better organized and easier for the user to understand than the previous search window (ie linking to the disam is simpler than using Back on the browser and going through articles one by one). A similar example would be if a user accidentally clicks on something in a disam page or other page that links to a specific article, but doesn't get the article he's expecting and wants to correct it, such as accidentally clicking on a link to this article from the disam page or somewhere else but actually wanting something different with a similar name.
Of course, I could be overlooking something here in terms of Wiki preferences for disam links. But where the purpose of the disam page is to get the user quickly to the page they actually want, it seems to me providing the link back to the disam in related pages would be the quickest route available. Let me know if I'm missing something in my analysis, though.Dugwiki 21:51, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
Using your same rationale, we should link to the disambiguation pages Manual and Style. Someone might enter "manual" or "style" into the search bar, get confused, and click on The Chicago Manual of Style in error. We should accomodate their error by linking to Manual and Style at the top of the The Chicago Manual of Style. This is absurd. Yes ideally disambiguation should get users to the page they want as fast as possible. That doesn't mean we should go out of our way to accomodate every possible scenario we can think up, however outlandish they may be. Again, as WP:DISAMBIG states, disambiguation is for "resolving ambiguity" in page titles. "The Chicago Manual of Style" is about as unambiguous as a page title can get. Punctured Bicycle 23:16, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
Actually, my rationale included an additional criteria - namely that the article appears on the linked disambiguation page. Since the Chicago Manual of Style doesn't appear on the disam pages for "Manual" or "Style", it likewise wouldn't have a crosslink back to the disam page. So those examples don't apply here. And in this case, the Chicago Manual of Style IS commonly abbreviated simply as "Chicago", which is why it appears on the disam page in the first place.
In addition, I don't yet see the downside to including the link back to the Chicago disam page. What exactly is being lost or risked by including that link? Far as I can tell all it does is give users more potential information and a quicker way to get back to the appropriate disam page. Dugwiki 15:12, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

How big are the chances that someone who is looking for Chicago, but not The Chicago Manual of Style, accidentally gets here? IMHO that's the only case where the otheruses introduction is useful. --Hhielscher 15:41, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

It's not that likely. Really there's two or three ways it could happen, but they're going to be rare. One is you visit the disam page and click on the wrong link by mistake. Another is you search for "Chicago" or something similar and click on a link to this article by mistake. A third way, which is probably not going to happen, would be to have an article that mentions both the CMoS and something else named "Chicago" and accidentally click the wrong internal link. Thus all of the scenarios I can think of off-hand are remote. On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any obvious harm in including the link, just in case someone actually wants to use it for either the above scenarios or curiosity or whatever other reason. So it's not clear to me yet why not including the link would be comparitively beneficial. Dugwiki 16:06, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
So, by your own admission, doing this is only remotely useful. What is the harm in allowing things that are only remotely useful to stay in Wikipedia articles? If we allow them to stay, the encyclopedia becomes bloated and looks unprofessional. Remotely useful things are removed from Wikipedia for this reason all the time. You can create an article on your neighbor Fred Johnson and note that he has three cats and works at the post office. Really, the article's inclusion on Wikipedia harms no one, and in some rare instance someone may even find the information useful. But the reality is, your article will be on AfD soon and then deleted. We can add links like Chocolate and Starfruit to the See also section of Apple. They don't really harm anything, and some may even find that they satiate their curiosity. But those links will be removed soon. Punctured Bicycle 16:56, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
On the other hand, this isn't related to the non-notable article policy. Fred Johnson's article in the example above would be removed as being non-notable, for example, not because of a "usefulness" criteria. Similarly, the links to "Chocolate" and "Starfruit" in your Apple example don't even remotely mention "Apple" anywhere in the article. In this case, however, you have a link back to a page that specifically links to the CMoS, and the reason is that CMoS is often referred to as "Chicago". So there is, in fact, relevancy to it being on the disam page, and therefore likewise some reason to include a link to it on the CMoS page. Thus neither of the hypothetical examples cited above would apply here. Dugwiki 17:11, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
You aren't engaging my point. By your own admission, doing this is only remotely useful. What is the harm in allowing things that are only remotely useful to stay in Wikipedia articles? If we allow them to stay, the encyclopedia becomes bloated and looks unprofessional. Punctured Bicycle 17:20, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, if your problem with this specific disam link is how it looks, if you think it looks unprofessional for example, then that could presumably be addressed by editing the text without removing the link. Claiming that the disam link "bloats" the encyclopedia, though, is hyperbole, especially where there is a rationale to the link. Dugwiki 17:28, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Although the specific disam link here is obviously pretty minor one way or another, the discussion above is actually pretty interesting in regards to disambiguation links in general. I think what I'll do is start a seperate discussion topic about disam links in general on the appropriate talk page, and leave this particular Chicago link up to you guys. If enough people want to remove the link, feel free. I've been looking at it from the more general question of when to include disam links in articles linked from disam pages. This is a case where the disam stems not from the name of the article, per se, but from what people informally call the actual guide.

So PB, you obviously feel most strongly about the link being there; if you and the other guys want to remove it, feel free. Dugwiki 18:04, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] missing citations template

This article (like any other in Wikipedia) requires citations (full citations) to reliable and verifiable sources; see WP:V, WP:V#Sources, WP:CITE (one should use Chicago style to illustrate, given this subject, I believe), and WP:EL. Do not embed external links in main text. Use a citations style (parenthetical citations and/or footnotes), keyed to the References list (just added); new references (books and articles) can be added to the References list. External links section must follow WP:EL; no redundancy between footnotes and external links section. Listing either as a footnote (full citation) or keyed to References list (bibliography). One cannot lift material from external sites and plop it into Wikipedia articles; quotation marks and citations to attribute sources of material are required. WP:ATTRIBUTION, though inactive, contains useful links to WP. See Plagiarism for what to avoid. Also, this is not supposed to be an advertisement for The Chicago Manual of Style; it is supposed to be an encyclopedia article about it; see WP:Advert (scroll down for info. re: the no advert template). --NYScholar 19:05, 12 October 2007 (UTC)