Chicago Manual of Style

[altariel]

Does anyone have experiencing organising references using the Chicago Manual of Style? I am currently on something of a crash course and cannot get access to the Manual until tomorrow. I am editing a volume of collected essays.

For various reasons, I've decided to use the notes-bibliography variant. I've found excellent online guides which show me how to format text in both notes and bibliography. However, I have a few remaining questions, one of which is conceptual and therefore fairly critical!

1. Am I right in my understanding that bibliographies can be split according to type of source material? Is there a specific hierarchy, or can I determine one that suits my purposes? For example, I have seen this hierarchy used:
   
   Books | Articles | Media | Web/Online | Government Information | Unpublished
   
   This suits my purposes very well... except that some of the essays use a small number of sources, all of which are books and articles. As a sub-question, then, could I merge those in the case of those essays for the purposes of clarity, or would that violate a consistency rule?



2. I've found two different formats for referencing television programmes, here (opens to PDF) and here (scroll down). Anyone know if one is preferred, or can I choose the one which best suits the project (the second one)?



3. Podcasts/webisodes. I'm guessing these would go under 'Media' rather than 'Web/Online'. Anyone know if there's an approved form?

As I say, I should be able to check the latter very easily in the library tomorrow, but it would be really helpful if anyone with experience of this style can indicate whether I'm making a serious blunder in the first question in particular. I much prefer to understand first principle rather than follow prescribed sets of rules, and am less likely to make errors that way. To anyone who can help: many thanks.

Comments

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Juno, you are a STAR. Thank you so much for this and the other pieces of information.


Maybe I'm wrong but wouldn't the subhead they talk about serve as an intro to a bibliographic section combining several essays?

There won't be a general bibliography, rather each essay will have its own bibliographic section. (Standard for the publisher.)

[iainjcoleman.livejournal.com]

The Chicago Manual of Style is online here, and you can sign up for a free 30-day subscription here.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

God bless you, ijc, I hadn't seen that last bit.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Having read what you posted above, and bearing in mind that the book is about three specific TV shows, I think that my best decision is to follow this:

"A bibliography may occasionally be divided into sections--but only if that makes things easier for readers ... It may be appropriate to subdivide at bibliography [...] (2) when readers need to see at a glance the distinction between different kinds of works"

So putting all the references in the main bibliography, except for performed material. This means that in general all that will go into that secondary section is episodes of the relevant TV shows. On occasion there will be some films, webisodes would go in there, but podcasts if they are discussions would go into the first section.

I'll ponder it more this evening, however.

Thank you, Juno! This is a big strain on me at the moment, and you have measurably eased matters for me.