3/15/22

One of my professors once told me that this was the "bible for historians," and for anyone in the humanities in general, it is indispensable. It is at once a style guide, a sort of thesaurus, and a manual for writing term papers, theses, dissertations, and books. Sure, Turabian distills this book (and the sin of the latest Turabian is that in a misguided attempt to appeal to more people, they've added a parenthetical reference system to the footnote system she popularized), but sometimes you must turn to the Chicago for more information.

As a historian who works on maps, I am still angry that Chicago does not treat them as a source, just illustrations. (Which means Turabian denigrates them, but at least mentions them, and says to put them in quotes, like an article, instead of italics, like a book.) But, I digress. After a few hours of browsing through this book I think it is a good update, more examples, more citations from internet sources, etc. ( )

I love this book. First, I just browsed a bit, and as a language lover, I found every page interesting. Then, I put it to the test. Does it tell you not to split an infinitive? NO! Of course not. English isn't Latin, and furthermore, it gives great examples of when you must split an infinitive for your sentence to make sense. The same holds for the ridiculous rule of not putting a preposition at the end of a sentence. Great advice there as well. I now feel confident turning to this book for tricky questions of grammar and punctuation, or just to pass away a few minutes reading it for enjoyment. So far, the lengthy index has made what I was looking for easy to find. ( )

Excellent manual.

There is not much to say about this book's content, since it's more of a reference. Nevertheless, it is well-formatted and easy to find what you're looking for. The digital version is likely more useful when doing digital work, but this is extremely helpful nevertheless. ( )

A classic. The bible of style guides. ( )