What’s New in the 17th Edition

The following is a partial list of the more significant changes, clarifications, updates, and additions to The Chicago Manual of Style for the 17th edition. (Get PDF here.)

Part I: The Publishing Process

Chapter 1: Books and Journals

Clarified

  • Placement of biographical notes for book authors (1.66)

New

  • DOI (Digital Object Identifier) for books, format and placement of (1.33, fig. 1.1)
  • Epilogue or afterword, distinction between (1.54)
  • Metadata for books, creating and using (1.75)
  • Abstracts and keywords for books (1.76)
  • Page numbers for journals that use a continuous publishing model (1.82)
  • Journal retractions (1.91)
  • Journal article metadata, creating and using (1.92)
  • Electronic publication formats compared: PDF, e-books, HTML, and apps (1.118)

Chapter 2: Manuscript Preparation, Manuscript Editing, and Proofreading

Clarified

  • Use of first-line paragraph indents in manuscripts (2.12)
  • Use of linked comments for author queries in electronic manuscripts (2.87, fig. 2.4)

New

  • Tabs versus indents, including kinds of indents and how to use them (2.11–12)
  • Format for lists and outlines, including tabs, runovers, and bullets (2.21)
  • Format for abstracts and keywords, of book as a whole versus individual chapters (2.25)
  • Proofreading tools for PDF, overview and tips (2.133)
  • Detailed checklist for books produced in EPUB format (fig. 2.8)

Chapter 3: Illustrations and Tables

Clarified

  • Placement of tables relative to text (3.51)

New

  • The parts of a table, illustrated (fig. 3.11)
  • Considerations related to accessible markup and alternative text for illustrations and tables, with recommended resources (3.28, 3.88)

Chapter 4: Rights, Permissions, and Copyright Administration

Expanded

  • Creative Commons, the six basic licenses (4.62)
  • Role of publisher in ensuring author has complied with warranties against defamation or invasion of privacy (4.73)

New

  • Table of copyright duration, by date of creation, type of authorship, and term of protection (table 4.1)
  • US government works, public domain versus copyright (4.21)
  • Copyright and graduate student work, including options for limiting access (4.60)
  • Open-access publishing models, overview (4.61)
  • Self-publishing agreements, including exclusivity issues (4.63)
  • Role of counsel, for publishers (4.74)
  • Interview and photo releases (4.77)

Part II: Style and Usage

Chapter 5: Grammar and Usage

Clarified

  • Count nouns versus mass nouns (5.4, 5.8)
  • Use of the property of person in analyzing nouns (5.12)
  • Use of they with a singular antecedent, generic and specific (5.48, 5.256)
  • Definition of infinitive verb (5.106)
  • Dangling participles stemming from the use of the passive voice (5.115)
  • Passive voice and be-verbs (5.118)

Expanded

  • Linking verbs (5.101)
  • Some incorrect uses of the subjunctive mood (5.124)
  • Glossary of problematic words and phrases (5.250)

New

  • Plurals, including plural form with singular sense, plural-form proper nouns, and tricky anomalies (5.13–16)
  • Joint and separate possession (5.22)
  • Pronouns in apposition (5.36)
  • Reciprocal pronouns (each other; one another) (5.53)
  • Remote relative clauses, problems with ambiguous antecedents (5.60)
  • Fused participles, when the possessive is unidiomatic (5.114)
  • Past-perfect subjunctive mood (5.127)
  • Progressive tenses (5.135)
  • Agreement of indefinite pronouns (anyone, nobody, etc.) (5.139)
  • Relative pronouns as subjects (5.140)
  • Agreement of pronouns joined by either–or or neither–nor (5.143)
  • Modal auxiliaries (5.145)
  • Sentence adverbs (5.157)
  • Adverbs that modify words other than verbs (5.168)
  • Conjunctions and the number of a verb (5.205)
  • Syntax
    • Definition of syntax and sentence types (statements, questions, directives, and exclamations) (5.210–16)
    • The four traditional types of sentence structures (simple, compound, complex, compound-complex) (5.217–20)
    • English sentence patterns (word order, syntactic patterns) (5.221–24)
    • Clauses (relative, appositive, conditional) (5.225–28)
    • Grammatical ellipsis (5.229)
    • Negation (not, no, neither, nor, double negatives, etc.) (5.230–38)
    • Expletives (it, there) (5.239–41)
    • Cleft sentences (types, use of) (5.246–48)

Chapter 6: Punctuation

Changed

  • A comma no longer follows etc. at the end of a list unless required by the surrounding syntax. (6.20)
  • A direct question introduced midsentence always begins with a capital letter. (6.42)

Clarified

  • Serial commas and cases of ambiguity (6.19)
  • Commas with adverbial or participial phrases in the middle or at the end of a sentence (6.30, 6.31)
  • Commas before a quoted or italicized title or expression (6.41)
  • Use of a colon before a series after a grammatically incomplete sentence (6.67)
  • When to capitalize the first word of items in a bulleted or numbered list (6.130)

New

  • Commas with a participial or adverbial phrase plus a conjunction (6.32)
  • Commas with too and either (6.52)
  • En dashes and line breaks (6.82)
  • En dash as em dash (British with space on either side) (6.83)
  • Em dashes and line breaks (6.90)
  • Slashes and line breaks (6.113)
  • Use of the space, including spaces with different widths and nonbreaking spaces (6.119–21)

Chapter 7: Spelling, Distinctive Treatment of Words, and Compounds

Changed

  • For the plurals of names of Native American groups, Chicago now defers to the first-listed form in Merriam-Webster. (7.10)
  • Internet is now lowercased (internet). (7.80)
  • Email is no longer hyphenated. (7.89)
  • Decision-making is now hyphenated as both an adjective and a noun. (7.89)

Clarified

  • Use of parenthetical abbreviations with the possessive of the spelled-out form (7.17)
  • Possessive versus attributive forms (7.27)
  • Italics or roman for proper nouns from other languages (7.53)

New

  • Plurals for centuries, when referring to more than one or a range (7.8)
  • Italics and markup (accessibility, text-to-speech) (7.49)
  • Bold or underscore for emphasis (7.51)
  • Mixing single and double quotation marks (7.58)

Chapter 8: Names, Terms, and Titles of Works

Changed

  • Use Madam President (not Mrs. or Ms.). (8.33)
  • Uppercase the G in Generations X, Y, and Z. (8.42)
  • Capitalize Romanticism; Romantic. (8.79)
  • Do not italicize Wikipedia or similar titles. (8.191)

Clarified

  • When to capitalize a lowercase particle at the beginning of a name (8.4)
  • When to use a full name with a professional title (8.19)
  • Capitalizing brand names or trademarks that appear in corporate materials in all lowercase (8.69; 8.154)
  • Observing punctuation in the original source for double titles connected by or (8.167)
  • Style for the at the beginning of a journal or newspaper title (8.170)
  • When to treat numbered or named editions as part of a title (8.176)
  • Roman versus arabic numerals to refer to numbered sections in another work (8.180)
  • Distinguishing between blogs and websites (8.192)

New

  • Korean names, order of family name and given name (8.17)
  • Names for applications, operating systems, and devices (8.155)
  • Titles of fairy tales and nursery rhymes (8.185)
  • Titles of governmental, departmental, and other titled or numbered forms (8.187)
  • Titles of video games (8.190)
  • Titles of maps (8.199)

Chapter 9: Numbers

Clarified

  • When to use a space between a numeral and an abbreviated unit of measure (9.16)
  • Expressions such as “turn of the twenty-first century” (9.32)
  • Use of colons in the twenty-four-hour system (9.39)
  • Use of commas to the right of the decimal marker (9.54)
  • Decimal markers and spaces between digits, SI style (9.55, 9.56)

New

  • Telephone numbers, US and international, punctuation and spacing (9.57)
  • Ratios, use of to or colon (9.58)

Chapter 10: Abbreviations

Changed

  • Chicago now permits the use of US (for United States) as a noun, provided the meaning is clear from the context. (10.32)

Clarified

  • When an abbreviation may be introduced and not used again (10.3)
  • When to use a definite article before an initialism (10.9)
  • Use of Jr. or Sr. with a first name alone (10.19)
  • Use of GMT (Greenwich mean time) versus UTC (coordinated universal time) (10.41)
  • Spaces with SI units versus Chicago’s usage (10.58)

New

  • Plurals for SI units (10.53)

Chapter 11: Languages Other Than English

New

  • Hawaiian, alphabet, diacritics (11.70)
  • Icelandic, alphabet, diacritics (11.70)
  • Old English vowels, use of macrons in long vowels and diphthongs (11.124)

Chapter 12: Mathematics in Type

Clarified

  • The role of MathML in providing accessible content, with additional resources (12.2)
  • Use of double integrals (12.41)
  • Use of matrix notation for multiline equations (12.50)
  • Conventions for probability and statistics, additional resources (12.57)

Chapter 13: Quotations and Dialogue

Clarified

  • Treatment of quotation marks, hyphens, and dashes in quoted material (13.7)
  • Retaining parenthetical citations in quotations (13.7)
  • Capitalization for unspoken discourse that begins midsentence (13.43)

New

  • When not to use a comma to introduce a quotation (13.15)

Part III: Source Citations and Indexes

Note: In previous editions of the Manual, source citations were referred to as documentation.

Chapter 14: Notes and Bibliography

Changed

  • The use of ibid. is now discouraged in favor of shortened citations. (14.34)
  • Comprehensive changes were made to the sections on legal and public documents, including new examples and other updates, to conform to the 20th edition of The Bluebook. (14.269–305)

Clarified

  • Some reasons to avoid 3-em dashes for authors’ names in bibliographies (14.67)

Expanded

  • Citation management tools (14.5)
  • Websites and blogs, including social media (14.205–10)
  • Personal communications, including texts and posts through social media (14.214)
  • Audiovisual recordings and multimedia (14.261)

New

  • Citing permalinks and the like (14.9)
  • Short forms for URLs (14.10)
  • Preserving a permanent record of potentially ephemeral sources (14.15)
  • Citing an online-only supplement to a book (14.112)
  • Citing locations in electronic formats without fixed pages (14.160)
  • Citing online reader comments (14.196)
  • Citing social media content (14.209)
  • Citing paintings, photographs, and sculptures (14.235)
  • Citing maps (14.237)
  • Citing industry standards (14.259)
  • Citing live performances (14.266)
  • Citing multimedia app content, including video games (14.268)

Chapter 15: Author-Date References

Changed

  • In journal citations, when the date of publication includes month and day, the year may be repeated to avoid ambiguity. (15.14; 15.49; 15.50, etc.)

Clarified

  • Some reasons to avoid 3-em dashes for authors’ names in reference lists (15.17).
  • Use of n.d. for sources for which there is only an access date to cite (15.50)
  • Citing author-date sources by title when no author is credited (15.39)

New

  • Using a colon with volume number in journal citations with no issue number (15.48)
  • Citing blog posts and blogs in author-date format (15.51)
  • Citing social media content in author-date format (15.52)

Chapter 16: Indexes

Clarified

  • Ampersand (&) and at sign (@), in alphabetizing (16.64)

New

  • Linked indexes for e-books and other reflowable electronic formats (16.13)
  • Indexing Korean names, order of family name and given name (16.82)