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