If you’ve ever found yourself agonizing over whether to write “7%” or “7 percent” in a quote, debating the merits of hyphens versus en dashes, or wondering if Napoleon needs his accent (spoiler: he doesn’t in English), then you’re in the right place. This month’s Chicago Manual of Style Q&A is here to settle these pressing dilemmas—with a side of grammar geekery.
Q. Is it okay for “%” to be changed to “percent” in quoted text to match the rest of the document, similar to how you can change en dashes to em dashes in CMOS 12.7?
A. It’s better to leave the symbol as is. Readers who look for the original text of a quotation that includes “a 7 percent increase” may have trouble finding the relevant passage if it has “a 7% increase” instead—or, if not, they may wonder what other changes have been made without notice.
By comparison, dashes are dashes. A reader consulting the source of a quotation that included “a 7 percent increase—defying all expectations” is unlikely to be tripped up by finding “a 7 percent increase – defying all expectations.”
In other words, we consider the difference between dashes to be purely typographical, whereas the difference between “%” and “percent” is just beyond that threshold—more like a case of synonyms.
Q. In the following sentence, is it correct to use an en dash after 25 but a hyphen after 30? “The report referred to a 25– to 30-year-old oak tree on the perimeter of the parking lot.”
A. It looks as if you’re trying to extend the logic behind expressions like “pre–Civil War,” where the idea is that an en dash, which is longer than a hyphen, bridges the space in “Civil War” to apply the prefix “pre” to both words in that phrase.
But Chicago style for your example would be to write “a 25-to-30-year-old oak tree,” with four hyphens. Only in the case of two different ages rather than a range would we recommend something like what you’ve written, but with a suspended hyphen instead of an en dash: “a 25- or 30-year-old oak tree”—which is short for “a 25-year-old or 30-year-old oak tree.” (See CMOS 7.96, section 1, under “age terms.”)
In each of those examples, the hyphen in “25-” is like the one in “30-”; an en dash rather than a hyphen after the first number might look like a mistake, and it wouldn’t necessarily make the expression any clearer. For more on suspended hyphens, see CMOS 7.95.
Q. Is it incorrect to include a space before a question or exclamation mark? E.g., “Do you like chocolate ?” Thank you.
A. In English? Yes, a space would be incorrect. But if you’re writing for a French audience, such a space would be expected. Just make sure it’s a nonbreaking space (see CMOS 6.129).
If you set your proofing language to French (under Review > Language), Microsoft Word will add a nonbreaking space next to certain marks of punctuation automatically as you type—not only before question marks and exclamation points but before colons and semicolons and between French quotation marks (or guillemets, « ») and the text they enclose. Word includes more than a dozen varieties of French, from Belgian French to Swiss French, and most add these spaces; the setting for Canadian French adds them only for colons and guillemets.
In English, however, such spaces are not required even if you’re quoting a French source verbatim in an otherwise English-language document. For more details, see CMOS 11.31.
Did you know? French typesetters used to add spaces before commas also (but not periods). See “One Space or Two” at CMOS Shop Talk (esp. footnote †).
Q. How would you style Napoleon’s name in something like “They researched the tin buttons on the uniforms of soldiers in Napoleon’s army.” Merriam-Webster has “Napoléon I” under the “Bonaparte” entry but “Napoleon I” under the “napoleon” entry. Encyclopaedia Britannica has “Napoleon I” as its first entry. CMOS 5.128 has “if Napoleon was in fact poisoned” as an example. So should my example sentence have an accent on “Napoleon,” include the “I,” or include “Bonaparte”?
A. Although fidelity to a person’s name is an important consideration, Napoleon Bonaparte entered the English vernacular long ago—without the accent. So, whereas “Napoléon” is the correct spelling of that name in French (where the accent is mandatory), there’s no need to use the French spelling in an English-language context.
As for the Roman numeral, add it only when needed for clarity—for example, to distinguish Napoleon I (or, in French, Napoléon Iᵉʳ) from Napoleons II and III. (Superscripts like the one in “Napoléon Iᵉʳ” are generally retained in an English-language context; see CMOS 11.30.)
As for “Bonaparte,” you can usually add that at your first mention of Napoleon, who is otherwise typically referred to by his first name.
Q. Dear Manuscript Editing Department, I am proofreading a bibliography using CMOS and wanted to ask where the period should go relative to the following title of a journal article: “In/Visibility and the (Post-Soviet) ‘Queer Closet.’ ” That placement seems to be the generally accepted solution in American English. I wonder, however, if, for the computational age, the following solution were not more appropriate: “In/Visibility and the (Post-Soviet) ‘Queer Closet’.” I find that it makes the string that one copies in order to search for it online correspond to what is in databases and on journal sites. Many thanks!
A. The period does look good between the two marks—where it solves the spacing problem between consecutive single and double quotation marks (we’ve added a narrow nonbreaking space to the first version of the title in your question, per CMOS 6.11)—but it’s not Chicago style.
And though we could make an exception for titles like the one you cite, we’d arguably then need to apply that same exception for periods (and commas) relative to single quotation marks everywhere for the sake of consistency—which, again, wouldn’t be Chicago style.
As for searches, the placement of the period (as well as its presence or absence) didn’t seem to make any difference in our tests, whereas the quotation marks and other marks of punctuation in the article title caused the occasional hiccup in certain library databases.
For a brief history of quotation marks relative to periods and commas—including the rationale for Chicago style (and, by extension, American English style)—see “Commas and Periods with Quotation Marks” at CMOS Shop Talk.
Q. I find ISBNs extremely useful when trying to locate copies of books of interest, especially when searching for secondhand copies of out-of-print books, for requesting books on interlibrary loan, and for disambiguating common names or titles. I’m writing a literature review in the form of an annotated bibliography and would like to include ISBNs in the entries for those books that have them, as a convenience and finding aid for readers. I can’t find any guidance for inclusion of ISBNs in Chicago-style footnotes or bibliography entries, even as an optional item. Can you provide a recommended template or example of placement and formatting?
A. Sure. Here’s how we’d recommend adding ISBNs to the bibliography entries for three different editions of Daniel James Brown’s bestselling book about a rowing team’s quest for Olympic gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics (listed here in chronological order, from the 2013 Viking hardcover to the 2023 Penguin Books movie tie-in edition):
Brown, Daniel James. The Boys in the Boat. Viking, 2013. ISBN 978-0-670-02581-7.
Brown, Daniel James. The Boys in the Boat. Penguin Books, 2014. ISBN 978-0-143-12547-1.
Brown, Daniel James. The Boys in the Boat. Movie tie-in ed. Penguin Books, 2023. ISBN 978-0-593-51230-2.
In general, an ISBN or other optional information may be added to an entry in a bibliography when needed, following the period at the end of the other citation data. But if you need to include an ISBN within a note, we’d suggest adding it in parentheses, as part of the facts of publication:
1. Daniel James Brown, The Boys in the Boat, movie tie-in ed. (Penguin Books, 2023; ISBN 978-0-593-51230-2), 33–34.
The hyphens in the ISBN, which are optional, will help those who need to manually copy or type the number. For more on ISBNs and how they work, start with CMOS 1.36 and these FAQs from ISBN.org.
Q. Hello, Chicago doesn’t seem to have an example of how to cite a contribution to a new edition of a book. Should the edition number follow a period or comma in the reference list entry below? Though my example is in Chicago 17 style, the question is still relevant for Chicago 18 style, so I would appreciate your guidance. Thanks!
Rothbard, Murray N. 2006. “The Libertarian Heritage: The American Revolution and Classical Liberalism.” In For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, 1–23. 2nd ed. Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute.
A. The best place for an edition number for a book is usually just after the title. When it’s part of an “In . . .” statement (as in your example), it follows a comma. As of the 18th edition, Chicago no longer requires a page range for a chapter or other contribution to a book or a place of publication, so your author-date entry would look like this:
Rothbard, Murray N. 2006. “The Libertarian Heritage: The American Revolution and Classical Liberalism.” In For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, 2nd ed. Ludwig von Mises Institute.
(If you were following CMOS 17, the edition number would precede the page range: “. . . Manifesto, 2nd ed., 1–23. . . .”) In a reference list entry for the book as a whole, the edition number would follow a period:
Rothbard, Murray N. 2006. For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto. 2nd ed. Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Bibliography entries would follow the same pattern (except for the placement of the year of publication; see CMOS 14.1).
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