Chicago's Backup

Last week I spent a lot of my time at work editing. Not editing for my real job, but editing for my sister. Dear Stacky had a paper due, and she didn't exactly have it done way ahead of schedule. I think she gave me a day in advance, which was pretty good for my family's track record. Most of the questions were sent through email; I'm white and she is orange:

yeah sorry my paper is so lame. i knew it was just a rough draft an therefore just stuck a bunch of information in there.

And your paper isn’t lame. It’s good; it just is two papers written into one. Two for one, what a deal!

Then the emails stayed consistent:

so my friend emily is writing a paper and one of the quotes she is using is super long. do you know how to put super long quotes in a paper? no one over here can remember.

Use left justification with a ragged right margin on block quotes. Anything longer than eight lines should be put in a block quote. Block quotes aren’t enclosed in quotation marks either. Double space everything except end notes and block quotes (I hate end notes).

so no quotes, no change of space?

I think that’s what single-spaced means and “block quotes aren’t enclosed in quotation marks.” Double-space above and below the block quote; single-space the block itself. No quotes around quote.

okay so for the dummies....how far over should the block quote be?

.5 margins on the left only. (Other style guides indent the entire thing.)

okay so that applies even if she is just doing .... blah blah blah (author, date)." she doesn't know what style she is using; just put author and date with a works sited at the end?

The stuff I wrote before only relates to block quotes. Non-block quotes would be “blah blah blah” (author, date).

How exciting. I am happy to report that Stacky got a 99 percent on her paper, only because she didn't do an Ibid reference correctly and had an extra space in her works cited. But I still have a question as to who graded it, because, not to be mean, but I would have graded it as an 80-something. I'm such a mean editor :) But overall, not bad--for turning in the paper 4 minutes before the deadline.