[Air-L] Italicizing Wikipedia? CMS15 v. CMS16
Joseph Reagle
joseph.2008 at reagle.org
Thu Feb 10 08:07:02 PST 2011
This is more arcane than even the citation discussion, but I wonder if anyone else has been noted how CMS16 might affect your work?
[[ http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/method/italicizing-wikipedia
2011 Feb 10 | Italicizing Wikipedia? CMS15 v. CMS16
In my writing up to now, I italicize Britannica because it is a
book. I never italicize Wikipedia or blog names because as The
Chicago Manual of Style 15th edition notes: "websites, if titled,
should be set in Roman, headline style, without quotation marks"
(8.199). However, the new 16th edition says much more:
General titles of websites mentioned or cited in text or notes
are normally set in roman, headline-style, without quotation
marks. An initial the in such titles should be lowercased in
midsentence. Titled sections, pages, or special features on a
website should be placed in quotation marks. Titles of the types
of works discussed elsewhere in this chapter (i.e., books,
journals, etc.) should usually be treated the same whether they
are published in print or online. Some websites share the name
of a printed counterpart, and others (such as Wikipedia) are
analogous to one of the types of works discussed elsewhere in
this chapter; these titles should be styled accordingly. (8.186)
I presume Wikipedia should be italicized since it is done in
Chicago's prose above. Looking for a justification, we see that in
the documentation section for blogs:
Titles of websites are generally set in roman without quotation
marks and capitalized headline-style, but titles that are
analogous to books or other types of publications may be styled
accordingly. Titled sections or pages within a website should be
placed in quotation marks. Specific titles of blogs—which are
analogous to periodicals—should be set in italics; titles of
blog entries (analogous to articles in a periodical) should be
in quotation marks. (14.244)
And for "Dictionaries and encyclopedias online" we see:
Online versions of encyclopedias should be cited like their
printed corollaries. In addition, in the absence of a posted
publication or revision date for the cited entry, supply an
access date. If the article includes a recommended form for the
URL, include it; otherwise, include a short form of the URL (as
in the second example) from which interested readers may enter
the search term. If a DOI for the article is available, use that
instead. (14.248)
Now, I always feel hesitant to infer a prose guideline from the
bibliographic guidelines, but since the change is apparent in the
bibliographic guideline, and they give an example in the prose
guideline, I suppose this means we should italicize online
reference works and blogs?
However, I don't feel quite prepared to leave the trusted 15th
(published in 2003) and it will take a while for software (such as
David Fussner's biblatex-chicago-notes-df) to follow.
]]
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