But Can I Start a Sentence with "But"?: Advice from the Chicago Style Q&A PDF
Preview But Can I Start a Sentence with "But"?: Advice from the Chicago Style Q&A
But Can I Start a Sentence with “But”? What Editors Want From Notes to Narrative PhiliPPa J. Benson and kristen ghodsee susan C. silver Storycraft Permissions, A Survival Guide JaCk hart susan M. Bielstein A Poet’s Guide to Poetry The Craft of Translation Mary kinzie John Biguenet and rainer sChulte, editors Indexing Books nanCy C. Mulvaney The Craft of Research Wayne C. Booth, gregory g. Developmental Editing ColoMB, and JosePh M. WilliaMs sCott norton The Architecture of Story A Manual for Writers of Research Will dunne Papers, Theses, and Dissertations The Dramatic Writer’s Companion kate l. turaBian Will dunne Student’s Guide for Writing College Papers The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation kate l. turaBian Bryan a. garner The Subversive Copy Editor Getting It Published Carol Fisher saller WilliaM gerMano Q But Can I Start a Sentence with A “But”? & Advice The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London f r o m t h e chicAgo Style Q&A The University of Chicago Press Editorial Staff With a ForeWord By Carol Fisher saller The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2016 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2016. Printed in the United States of America 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 37064- 4 (cloth) ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 37078- 1 (e- book) DOI: 10.7208/ chicago/9780226370781.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: University of Chicago. Press. Title: But can i start a sentence with “but”? : advice from the Chicago style Q&A / the University of Chicago Press editorial staff ; with a foreword by Carol Fisher Saller. Other titles: Chicago guides to writing, editing, and publishing. Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2016. | Series: Chicago guides to writing, editing, and publishing Identifiers: LCCN 2015037942 | ISBN 9780226370644 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226370781 (e- book) Subjects: LCSH: Authorship— Handbooks, manuals, etc. | Authorship— Style manuals. Classification: LCC PN147 .B88 2016 | DDC 808.02/7— dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015037942 This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of Paper). Editing might be a bloody trade. But knives aren’t the exclusive property of butchers. Surgeons use them too. Blake Morrison Contents Foreword, by Carol Fisher Saller ix 1 “It’s not so much an issue of correctness as of ickiness” // 1 Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Initialisms 2 Compounds 5 Numbers 8 Plurals 11 Possessives and Attributives 13 Words and Letters 16 2 “‘President of the Mess Hall’ is going to look pretty silly” // 19 Proper Nouns 19 Titles of Works 27 3 “Three people have three strong opinions about commas . . .” // 30 Commas 30 Hyphens 33 Vertical Lists and Bullets 36 Other Dots, Dashes, and Squiggles 38 4 “Can fewest mean zero?” // 43 Use or Abuse? 43 Restriction 46 Gender Benders 49 Prepositions 51 Pronouns 53 Grammatical or Not? 55 5 “If you give birth to a source and he’s still living under your roof . . .” // 59 How Do You Cite . . . ? 59 Notes 63 Bibliographies 66 What if . . . ? 70 Quotations and Dialogue 73 6 “Holy metaphysics— we aren’t that fancy” // 78 Authors, Titles, and Metadata 78 Formatting 81 Illustrations 83 Permissions, Credits, and Practical Issues 85 Indexing 88 Using a Style Manual 90 7 “Aaagh!” to “argh!” to “aahhh!” // 92 Alphabetizing 92 In the Weeds of Editing 94 Special Characters 99 URLs 100 You Could Look It Up 102 Things That Freak Us Out 105 Index 109 Foreword Since 1997, readers of The Chicago Manual of Style’s website have been submitting style and grammar questions to the Q&A page that is updated each month by manuscript editors at the University of Chicago Press. Before there was a website, we occasionally answered questions over the phone. Not that we actively solicited such queries; in fact, to be honest, they could be a little annoying. After all, it takes a certain amount of chutzpah to call up a major university press and expect an editor there to stop what she’s doing and determine whether nonfat takes a hyphen. (It doesn’t.) Nevertheless, that’s what we used to do, at no charge. A bonus for us was that some- times we ended up having interesting conversations with cu- rious strangers who cared as much as we did about a point of grammar or about formatting a citation properly. Occasion- ally, a conversation led to an improvement in the recommen- dations we offer in the Manual. After we discontinued the phone-q uery service and invit- ed the entire planet to seek our advice online, demand quick- ly exceeded our ability to answer and still meet our deadlines. So we decided to choose a few of the most interesting ques- tions and answer them in a monthly online Q&A. The posted questions and answers go into an archive that is searchable to anyone with an Internet connection. The archive contains only questions that were featured in the Q&A; regrettably, ✳ ix ✳
The list of books you might like
