Sunday, January 26, 2020
Blog #12 – learnings from #TheChicagoManualOfStyle.
If your book contains words or translations from other languages, you may want to read on.
Formatting
- When using words from other languages, italicize them unless the word appears repeatedly, in which case italicize the first time and then drop the italics after. This rule applies to all words except proper nouns. So, my protagonist’s name, Siana Singh, shouldn’t be italicized.
Don’t italicize the words (from foreign languages) that have entered the English dictionary, e.g., pariah. - When translating the word, use parenthesis. Hanji (yes).
- Plural form of these words follow the rules of the original language.
- Retain punctuation when quoting original text although punctuation like periods, guillemets (<< >>), quotation marks, etc., can be altered.
- Whether to use English title or original name of the book for translated publications, the choice largely depends on the target audience. Use the one that applies to its readers.
- Quotations from other languages are not in italics but set off as block quotations or roman type based on their length.
- Separate the source from text with a semicolon when embedded within text. Optionally, use notes for citations (more to follow in a subsequent chapter).
The Chicago Manual of Style (TCMOS) gets into details of various languages like Latin, French, Chinese, etc. It was a lot of fast reading on my part, but I’ll summarize a few items I learned. So, don’t use my blog for exhaustive recap of every element in TCMOS, just a few highlights.
- Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, and Russian languages use guillemets instead of quotation marks. <<quoted text>>
- In German, reverse guillemets are used for quotation marks. >>quoted text<<
- Most African languages with exception of Arabic use Latin alphabet.
- Roadways, squares, etc. are lowercased in French. In Spanish, proper nouns are lowercased unless abbreviated.
- French includes thin space before colons, semicolons, question marks, exclamation marks, em dashes, and guillemets.
- In Spanish, question mark and exclamation surround the sentence, inverted in the beginning, regular at end.
- Em dash starts a dialogue in French and Russian. –I am a dialogue in French. Same is true for Spanish except dialogues in Spanish end with an em dash too.
- French, Italian, Spanish languages don’t include spaces in ellipses to mark interruptions. Breaks appear as… instead of . . . When writing for English publications, use the format with spaces as advised by TCMOS.
- In German, all nouns are capitalized (not just proper nouns). ein Haus. Even pronouns in polite second person form are capitalized.
- Hebrew language has no capital letter. It’s also read right to left, even when embedded within English.
The book ends with old and middle English, and sign language.
My Takeaways
The bullet point number one in the formatting section above was my most relevant takeaway from this chapter. I also learned that it’s hard for me to study material that I know I can’t apply in my work right away.
I have followed an order that made sense to me thus far. Going forward, I will be following a sequential order and start from the top: Chapter 3 on illustrations and tables next time. Stay tuned.
Source: The Chicago Manual of Style, SEVENTEEN EDITION.
