[Tex/LaTex] How to create a Chicago Manual of Style formatted document in LaTeX

chicago-styleformattingtypography

I have an assignment which requires me to use CMS formatting, double spaced, in 12pt font. I'd rather avoid using the much inferior "Word" or "Writer" programs — in particular I like how LaTeX inserts line breaks and such.

However, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to force LaTeX to produce such a document. Is there a document class floating around which would allow the production of such a document using LaTeX?

Best Answer

The memoir class has a sane approach to describing the organisation of documents, with all the right parts for front matter, back matter, and markup of main matter, and perhaps more importantly, the manual is truly excellent, and will give guidance on how to realise your document. If you use {memoir}, as I strongly recommend,Chicago raises a number of smaller issues and one big issue (all quotes from Chicago #15: I have not yet got to grips with #16):

  1. Chicago is a pretty liberal style, that is full of suggestions and descriptions of alternatives about layout, but fewer rules about typography. For instance, Chicago allows chapters to begin on either verso or recto, saying only that "The first chapter ordinarily begins on a recto" only to qualify that with an exception. But lots of people have the idea that Chicago wants chapters always to begin on recto... Look at the details about typography from a Windows style seller, How Seminary Style Differs from Chicago/Turabian Style: it is nearly all without foundation in Chicago. So, do find out whether the "Chicago" requirement actually means something more specific.
  2. Latex doesn't have a good workflow for bibliographies, I have concluded after many years of frustration. You can't use established Bibtex styles to conform to Chicago's guidance on how to set out the reference list, because of deep problems with how references are represented in Bibtex, and I have no confidence that Biblatex makes more than cosmetic improvements to this. My recommendation is to choose a Bibtex style and bibliographic citation package that gets the following right: the citation keys of the form (Authorlist1, date1; ...) (which will be what you need in most cases). and puts the authors, date, title and publication venue in that order; {natbib} or Harvard will do for this, with {natbib} supporting more flexible citations. Then generate the .bbl file, cut and paste it in place of the \bibliography command, and edit the entries one by one so that they actually conform to Chicago. I said something a bit similar in my How to APA 6th answer.
  3. Chicago does have things to say about punctuation and spacing around punctuation, which is your job to follow. Word has nice macro packages to check for possible problems; Latex, AFAIK, does not. Using \frenchspacing makes strict correctness a little easier.
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