Did you know that The Chicago Manual of Style’s guidelines for formatting footnotes/endnotes are different from Word’s defaults?
In Word, if you click on Insert Footnote, a superscripted number will appear where the cursor is placed and a corresponding footnote number will be inserted at the bottom of the page under a short horizontal line. (If you click on Insert Endnote, the same thing will happen, but the note number will appear at the end of the chapter or the manuscript, depending on your settings.) That number will be indented ¼ inch, as it should be. But it will be superscripted and followed by a space—which does not follow CMOS guidelines.
According to CMOS, that footnote/endnote number should not be superscripted. And it should be followed by a period. For example:
1. Kathy Ide, Editing Secrets of Best-Selling Authors (Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas, 2020).
(I did a bunch of internet research to figure out how to modify Word’s default style for footnotes/endnotes. If you’d like the list of instructions I compiled and reworded for clarity, email me.)
| I’d love to know: If you’ve worked with a traditional publisher on a nonfiction book, did they want you to format the footnotes/endnotes the way CMOS advises? Or were they fine with having you use Word’s default format? Did the publisher’s interior designer change the footnote numbers back to superscripts without the period? |
***
Writers’ Conference at Mount Hermon
As you may be aware, Mount Hermon stopped sponsoring the Christian Writers Conference they’d been putting on for 50 years when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Like many others in the industry, I was beyond devastated—especially since I’d been the director those last four years. When the director of a small Christian writers group near Mount Hermon decided to take on the task of running the writers’ conference as a guest group there, I had mixed feelings. I know the powerful way God blesses people at Mount Hermon’s events. But I also know how huge a job running that conference is and what a significant financial risk is involved.
I didn’t attend the guest-group writers’ conference at Mount Hermon its first three years. But when a close writer friend told me she’d been chosen to serve on faculty for this year and asked if I’d room with her, I decided to go.
And wow, did God have some major blessings for me there!
Details about the divine encounters I had at Mount Hermon are on my newsletter for this month. To get my newsletters, visit any page of my new website and find the invitation to sign up. My current freebie for new subscribers is my detailed description of the changes between The Chicago Manual of Style’s 17th and 18th editions. (If you’re already a subscriber and would like this file, email me to request it.)