With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Chicago Manual of Style Now Online

There are those who say that in the Internet age the rules of grammar and style are dead. But the people at the University of Chicago Press, publisher of the Chicago Manual of Style, are not among them.

And so starting tomorrow the manual — sometimes known as publishing’s Miss Manners — will be available online by subscription, meaning that those who need to know, pronto, whether it is ever all right to capitalize the first letters of e. e. cummings’s name will no longer have to search through the more than 956-page volume to find the answer.

The price for the online manual will be $25 for individuals for the first year, $30 thereafter, and more for institutions, depending on their size. The list price of the hardcover print version is $55.

And if you listen to Anita Samen, managing editor of the press’s books division, having the manual online is going to revolutionize the way its users, who include writers, editors and publishers, work. “You can consult it on the fly,” she said, “so you are free to do your writing and editing without having to retain huge numbers of rules in your head.”
Read entire article at NYT