Chicago Manual note style - permissible variations?

Dear community,

I am authoring a book that will appear with a UK academic publisher. In their style guide, Chicago Manual (16th ed.) is recommended. In Zotero, I could find Chicago Manual 17th ed., and I hoped it would be pretty much the same.

However, my copy editor has found several differences:

1) Ibid.: In Zotero, there is a Chicago full-note style with "ibid.", but my publishers also prefer this for a "note" style.

2) Short-titles: In the "note" style, Chicago Manual in Zotero gives a short-title when a publication is cited for the second consecutive time, but it reverts to "author" only on the 3rd reference. This does not seem to make so much sense.

So my questions are:

1) What is the "official" guideline for repeated citations in Chicago Manual "note" style. Are my publishers' wishes permissible variations?

2) Can I create a variant of the Chicago Manual style with note + ibid. without running into legal issues?

Thanks for your advice!
  • edited September 28, 2022
    One part of my problem seems to be solved as I have just found a Chicago Manual note style "with Ibid." in the repository.

    However, I have one other question:

    My publishers want en-dashes as date separators in all citations, but when importing titles from library catalogues etc., I have got a short dash between numbers.

    Can that be fixed within the citation style?
  • edited September 28, 2022
    We have many Chicago variants on our repository, also the 16th version is available which still had the ibid functionality that I think was removed in version 17.

    Have a look here: https://www.zotero.org/styles?q=chicago
  • Could you give an example for hyphens that you're seeing in date ranges? Zotero will never touch item titles, so if that's where they are, you'll need to fix them in the Zotero data.
  • edited September 28, 2022
    Yes, the hyphens are mainly in non-anglophone titles and titles of blogs / websites that I grabbed via ZOTERO connector, and it seems like I need to fix them by hand.

    Here is an example of a website:

    The History of Parliament Trust, ‘Parliaments 1715-1754’.

    [It seems that there is not much of a difference between the hyphen and "–⁠" in the font used here, but it is very visible in Times New Roman.]

    And I have another question.

    In Chicago style, I get the following when quoting pages from a volume:

    Hume, Essays and Treatises, IV:136.

    There is no space between "IV" and the page number. My copy editor also flagged this an error, and I think this should be fixed in the citation style?
  • No, that's correct, there's no space between volume number and page number in Chicago style, see 14.118

    3. Byrne, Lisle Letters, 4:245.
    4. Complete Tales of Henry James, 5:34.
  • Thanks so much! I will check back with the publishers. I am very grateful for your help. We normally use APA in my institution, so I am getting really confused.
  • I have two more question about the available Chicago manual styles in ZOTERO:

    1) Page ranges:

    I am always adding full page numbers (e.g. 123-124) to the citation field, which now gives me the following contracted page ranges:

    Lengel, This Glorious Struggle, 184–85.
    Franklin, ‘Plain Truth’, 168–69.

    My publisher would ideally want to see:

    Franklin, ‘Plain Truth’, 168–9.

    Can I implement this in a customized version of an existing Chicago manual style? I have downloaded a CSL file already but am not sure where to find the relevant attributes.

    2) Italics:

    Although the citation demo shows that titles of monograph publications are printed in italics, it only works for me in the footnotes, not in the bibliography. I am using a "note" style. Can anyone give me a hint why that is?






  • 1. The current behavior is correct Chicago style: https://cmosshoptalk.com/2018/04/10/316-7-316-17-or-316-317-chicago-style-for-number-ranges/ so I'd suggest pushing back against the publisher on that. It's possible to adjust in the style by changing the page-range-format from "chicago" to "minimal"
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