Written by Megan Ryan

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In May, a fifth edition of The Christian Writer’s Manual of Style (CWMS) was released. This style guide is based on Chicago Style, but it covers religious topics more deeply.

If you attended PENCON 2026, you had a chance to hear about some of the updates straight from the author, Robert Hudson, or to read about them on his workshop’s handout. I enjoyed hearing him explain some of the changes. So if you missed this year’s PENCON, you might want to purchase the recording of his session when it’s available.

Some of the information in this post came from Mr. Hudson’s workshop, and some came from flipping through my copy of the book.

Physical Changes

If you owned a paperback copy of the CWMS fourth edition, you’ll probably notice some changes as soon as you hold the fifth edition. The new version is thinner, with fewer pages than the last one. But it is not because there is less information now. CWMS 5 has a smaller font, which results in a smaller form factor. If you have trouble with smaller print, you may want to get the Kindle version instead (which has the bonus feature of being searchable).

A change that I consider very positive is adding a gray bar at the top of the capitalization list pages. This results in a gray box on the edge of those pages so that you can turn right to the capitalization list without needing to add a sticky note or bookmark. The other physical change I noticed is that the Word List has two columns of text now instead of one.

Sections

The main sections of the guide are unchanged from the last edition. There is the Style Guide first, followed by the Word List. An appendix was added that offers advice for writers, editors, and proofreaders. This is about eight pages of extra tips.

I was hoping to see extra guidance for fiction in this version of CWMS, and Mr. Hudson said that there was a new section on that. But I was disappointed that this advice was only eight points that took up about half a page.

Finding where the guide says you don’t have to give chapter and verse references when quoting Scripture in fiction still requires an editor or writer to discover that paragraph under the “Familiar Phrases” subheading in the “Quoting the Bible” entry of the style guide (pp. 250–251 in CWMS 5). I don’t think many people would look for the information there unless they already knew where it was.

Capitalization List

More than six hundred new words have been added to the capitalization list, which I think is great. That may be the most-used section of CWMS. Some of the additions I noticed are: abundant life, Accession Psalms, the Accuser, Allah, benison, Blessed Sacrament, conclave, and the Sinner’s Prayer.

There are some words whose capitalization has changed in the new edition. Some that I think will pop up more often are Gehenna (now capitalized), holy place (now lowercase), and John’s gospel (with gospel now lower in more cases than before).

Style Guide

There are more than thirty new English Bible versions listed, and I was surprised there were that many to add. The permissions guidelines sections have been updated, and there are more headings to break up the info. But since the publishers’ guidelines could change in the coming years, it’s probably good to check the publisher websites every so often as well.

A new entry in the guide covers AI usage and compares using it for research to using it to generate content. This is a very brief overview, but I found it to be a helpful and calm summary.

Some other new entries I noticed in the Style Guide include:

• Grawlix: Using symbols for profanity is mostly acceptable in comics.
• Gendered Pronouns for God: I had some trouble finding this at first, but it’s titled “Pronouns for God, Gendered.”
• Passive Voice: Sometimes it is unavoidable or even better than active voice.
• BC/AD: There’s a discussion of using these labels versus BCE and CE.
• Dyslexia Considerations: This is a topic I’m glad the publishing industry is keeping in mind.
• Heresies and Schisms: These used to be only in the Word List.
• Pronouns in the KJV: The first entry in the K section clarifies thee/thou versus ye/you.
• Capitalization at the Beginning of Verses in the KJV, under “Quoting the Bible”: You can lowercase the start of a new verse if that fits the surrounding punctuation or grammar.

Entries that have changes or clarifications include:

• Racial Designations under “Capitalization Guidelines”: It is now recommended to capitalize Black.
• Tenses for Verbs of Saying under “Quotations, General”: Generally, use past tense for things that happened in the past, like Luke wrote the book of Acts. But it’s fine to use present tense for interacting with a historical text today: Acts tells us that the early church . . .
• Commas and Semicolons in Scripture Quotations, under “Quoting the Bible”: This was a change in CMOS 18 that I hadn’t heard about or noticed, but you can use a comma between Bible references from different chapters or books now. For example: Ephesians 5:16, 6:10. I thought it was overkill to use semicolons between references in the same book, so saving them for when you need to show more of a difference makes sense to me.

Conclusion

There are more changes on Mr. Hudson’s PENCON handout and probably many more he didn’t have time to mention, so I hope that you take some time to flip or scan through a copy of CWMS 5 yourself to make further discoveries.

I think the changes are beneficial overall; I just wish the fiction guidance was more robust. If there’s a change you feel strongly about or something you wanted to see included, let us know in the comments.