I came home from the post office this afternoon to find M. typing on her PowerBook at the dining room table.

“Cleanse your mind of impure thoughts,” I said. “Assume an attitude of reverence, for the new Holy Book has come.

And then I sat the carton on the sofa and lifted it out: The Chicago Manual of Style, Sixteenth Edition.

Only editors’ hearts beat more quickly when they read text like, “We now recommend, for example, a single approach to ellipses—a three- or four-dot method (chapter 13, where we also explain the European preference for bracketed ellipses.)”

Or “More attention has been given to the role of software for manuscript editors—for example, with the addition of a manuscript cleanup checklist intended to benefit authors and editors alike.”

There are indeed times when it is good to have Authority.

And for those needing only modest amounts of Authority, I recommend the Online Citation Quick Guide, covering both humanities style (footnotes) and author-date style.