Thanks, CMOS

A Public Service: Order of Book Parts

Sans permission of CMOS. Whatcha gonna do?

I'm putting this here for my own quick reference as much as anything.

FRONT MATTER
Book half title		i
Series title, frontispiece, or blank		ii
Title page		iii
Copyright page		iv
Dedication		v
Epigraph		v or vi
(Table of) Contents		v or vii
(List of) Illustrations		recto or verso
(List of) Tables		recto or verso
Foreword		recto
Preface		recto
Acknowledgments (if not part of preface)		recto
Introduction (if not part of text)		recto
Abbreviations (if not in back matter)		recto or verso
Chronology (if not in back matter)		recto
TEXT
First text page (introduction or chapter 1)		1
or
Second half title or first part title		1
Blank		2
First text page		3
BACK MATTER
Acknowledgments (if not in front matter)		recto
Appendix (or first, if more than one)		recto
Second and subsequent appendixes		recto or verso
Chronology (if not in front matter)		recto
Abbreviations (if not in front matter)		recto
Notes		recto
Glossary		recto
Bibliography or References		recto
(List of) Contributors		recto
Illustration Credits (if not in captions or elsewhere)		recto
Index(es)		recto

More APA Rage

White
Black
New York, NY in Biblio
Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press
353-365

Makes a body appreciate Chicago, IL

Bears Repeating: An Oldie but a Goodie

"Take time to familiarize yourself with this manual. The slightest deviation from the style described herein will lead directly to the collapse of our carefully constructed editorial house of cards, economic upheaval, spiritual and moral chaos, and the end of civilization as we know it."

—APWA Style Guide, 2nd ed., American Public Welfare Association, 1995

Good Times Gone Wrong

A little job that I'm squeezing in among the more unpleasant ones is four short journal articles on a not-particularly-grueling although academic subject. The writing is fine, but the editorial regime is driving me crazy: MLA, which I work with about once a year, and UK punctuation and spelling.

Of course, only about half of the authors have paid any attention to either, leaving me to transform the documents into styles with which I am generally unfamiliar. MLA is OK, but it usually takes me to the end of the book to really get in the groove. On four short pieces, that groove is hard to find. And transforming 30 footnotes from Chicago style to MLA cites and a Works Cited listing takes about five times longer than it should.

Why can't anything be easy? As another editor and I were commiserating some weeks back, it's hard to believe that some people are paid the same to copyedit young adult fiction as we get to massage square scholarly tomes into artificially round holes.

To make matters worse, I was paid for this job about a year ago (strange circumstances), making this feel way too much like work. I ate the carrot at the end of this stick long, long ago. Tasted good at the time.

APA Derangement Syndrome

I can recommend absolutely nothing about the work pictured here -- from the design and organization of the printed volume to the style regime recommended therein.

The only thing I can imagine is that the book is a revenue generator for reasons that have nothing to do with editorial style. The American Psychological Association publishes this monstrosity to drive people into the arms of the people whose careers the APA supports.