Manual of Style: Being a Compilation of Rules
in Force at the University of Chicago Press,
To Which Are Appended Specimens of Types in Use.
Such was titled the first published edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, printed in 1906. (The photo above is of a facsimile edition.) In the preface, the anonymous writers explain themselves:
Having its genesis, more than a decade ago, in a single sheet of fundamentals, jotted down at odd moments for the individual guidance of the first proofreader; added to from year to year, as opportunity would offer or new necessities arise; revised and re-revised as the scope of the work, and, it is hoped, the wisdom of the workers, increased, it emerges in its present form as the embodiment of traditions, the crystallization of usages, the blended product of the reflections of many minds. (v)
If a no-nonsense approach is evident in today’s sixteenth edition, in 1906 the tone was downright bossy:
Do not follow copy blindly, unreasoningly. Proofreading machines are yet to be invented. (100)
And as for authors, typographically they very often do not know what they want until they see it in type—and not always then. (100)
Do not permit yourself to be stampeded. (101)
In the Manual’s first edition, about a third of the text (some seventy-five pages) is given over to type specimens, and a third to “Rules for Composition,” of which punctuation takes fully half the acreage. (Back then, instead of question marks, writers wielded “interrogation points.”) Rules for styling footnotes are herded into a brisk three pages.
If you find all this interesting and amusing, you might like to know that for the month of September, a free e-book download of the 1906 facsimile edition is available from the University of Chicago Press. (It’s a promotion for the Chicago Digital Editions e-book list, but there are no strings attached. There is also a free PDF version.) Browsing through it, you’ll recognize the beginnings of the long and well-tested tradition many of us come from:
About many matters in this world, grammar and logic included, there is abundant room for differences of opinion. Grant writers the privilege of preferring theirs to yours. (99)
[This manual] does not presume to be inflexibly consistent; applicability, in the printing-office, is a better test than iron-clad consistency, and common-sense a safer guide than abstract logic. . . . If, in addition to this its main object, this Manual of Style may incidentally prove helpful to other gropers in the labyrinths of typographical style, its purpose will have been abundantly realized. (vi–vii)
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