Hating CMS, cont'd

Once again, the Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition, rule 9.10) is a tad less than definitive, this time on the treatment of very large numbers.

"A figure of 4.5 billion years is often given as the age of the solar system.
They were speaking in the order of 25 billion (or twenty-five billion)."

Why I Hate the Chicago Manual of Style

I had forgotten the rule on abbreviating certain titles. So I proceeded to section 15.13, which provides reason #3,985 for my hatred of the so-called guide:

Rep. Mark Kirk; Representative Kirk . . .

Senator Susan Collins ("Sen.," though used in journalism, is better avoided in formal prose)

It simply defies logic. And what the hell is formal prose? Anything not written on a napkin?

Let's add "CMS-induced frustration" to the inevitable duo of "death and taxes."

2009's Least Helpful Help

It's a toss-up.

First up, there's Word Help. (How do you construct a macro? How do you convert straight quotation marks to curlies in existing text?)

And, of course, contending is the Chicago Manual of Style. There are so many times when (1) what I'm looking for is not in the index location that most reasonable people would expect it to be, and (2) CMS equivocates on rule after rule.

These tools of my trade need some serious sharpening.

Acquisitions vs. Editorial: An irresistible force meets an immovable object

Within a publishing company, Acquisitions brings the work in, and Editorial makes it worthy of publication. Many acquired works trigger the inherent conflict between the two operations that always lurks in the shadows.

Acquisitions is all about signing an author and locking up his work—on occasion regardless of whether his submitted manuscript adheres to the submission requirements or the terms of the contract. When the company accepts an inferior manuscript, it ends up paying a premium for the work, in terms of the extra—often substantial—Editorial costs.

I am currently working on such a manuscript. The author is a lawyer and has structured almost 700 endnotes according to The Uniform System of Citation (also known as “The Blue Book”), the style guide for legal writers. He did not, as agreed, write the notes according to The Chicago Manual of Style.

As a result, I have to, for example, make the following types of changes throughout: Blue Book: Alfred E. Newman, Snap, Crackle, and Pop, 32 U. Pa. L. Rev. 107 (1994); Chicago: Alfred E. Newman, “Snap, Crackle, and Pop,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review (1994) 32:107. That, to an order of magnitude.

The immovable object often gets dislodged.