Q. I’m copyediting a novel in which the author has gone hyphen-mad. She is fond of such terms as “horse-yard,” “juniper-wood,” “yard-gate,” “cedar-grove,” and so on. I want to defer to an author’s stylistic preferences, but I feel too much is too much. In most cases, the meaning seems perfectly clear without a hyphen. What can I say to this author?
A. Are you working for a publisher? If so, they will have guidelines that you can wave at the author. (Here, we follow Merriam-Webster.) If not, you should let her know what source you follow for hyphenated compounds and ask if she has any objections. If you need to justify your method to the author, try to find cases where she’s inconsistent and explain that in order to arbitrate, you’ll be using a dictionary. Most authors are in favor of consistency, and will understand that following a reference book is the best guarantee of this. Point out that an abundance of hyphens can give a jittery feel to a narration. (A fiction writer will fear that.) Finally, make sure she understands that the same phrase can appear with and without a hyphen depending on its use as a noun or adjective, and that you’ll be marking them accordingly.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Dear CMOS, I am experiencing a meltdown at work. My colleagues believe that “test taker” is one word, while I believe that it should be hyphenated as “test-taker.” I am also unclear, after reading the CMOS, about another form of this phrase, “test taking.” If I write, “It is an important strategy for test taking,” should “test-taking” be hyphenated? Thank you for your help. This has become a highly debated issue within our office and I would love to resolve it once and for all.
A. Following Chicago style, we would hyphenate “test taking” only when it’s an adjective. Otherwise, we would keep it open. We follow Merriam-Webster for closed compound nouns and adjectives, and “testtaker” doesn’t appear there. Obviously, the hyphenation of compounds is far too complex and fluid to be strictly covered by a set of rules. Check the dictionary, and if the compound isn’t there, then consider whether a hyphen is needed in order to avoid confusion. If it’s not, then omit the hyphen. It might help to read the hyphenation guide for compounds, combining forms, and prefixes in CMOS 7.96.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Please help! My British colleagues keep giving me books to proofread (for US publication, so they should be in American style) in which phrases like “parent-teacher relationship” and “human-animal bond” contain an en dash rather than a hyphen. Chicago says that if either “parent” or “teacher” were an open compound (such as, I suppose, “math teacher”), an en dash would be appropriate—so am I to conclude that since this is not the case I should use a hyphen? As far as I can tell, none of the examples in the section on hyphenation pertain to this construction. Are the en dashes correct, or are they just British?
A. Your British colleagues might be following Butcher’s Copy-editing: The Cambridge Handbook for Editors, Copy-editors, and Proofreaders, 4th ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2006), which advises using what it calls “en rules” “to convey a distinction in sense” (section 6.12.1; note that it is also the common British practice to use an en dash with a word space on either side where American publishers would use an em dash closed up to the surrounding words). This allows one to write, for example, “US–British relations” to mean relations between the United States and Britain. The en dash is supposed to convey something more than simply relations that are characterized or modified, independently, by the United States and Britain. And while editors here like such a subtle distinction, we do not believe that it is useful enough to mandate, and therefore we prefer the hyphen (e.g., US-British relations). En dashes instead of hyphens should be used between words in running text only as a last resort—usually to bridge an open compound, as you suggest—and even then it’s probably fair to assume that most readers will see a hyphen.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Are there compounds that are always hyphenated, such as “up-to-date” or “step-by-step,” or are these only hyphenated when modifying another word, as in “up-to-date rules” or “step-by-step procedures”? My company is writing “We’ll walk you through it step by step,” and I thought that it should be “We’ll walk you through it step-by-step.”
A. We prefer to keep such phrases open when they are used adjectivally and appear after the noun they modify, even if they are listed in Merriam-Webster with hyphens:
step-by-step recovery (where “step-by-step” is a phrasal adjective preceding the noun it modifies)
but
feelings that were out of date (because “out of date” follows the noun it modifies)
But when used adverbially, compounds listed as hyphenated adverbs in Merriam-Webster retain their hyphens:
walking across the continent step-by-step (see M-W’s entry for “step-by-step”)
See CMOS 7.96, section 2, under “phrases, adjectival” and “phrases, adverbial.”
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I seem to remember from somewhere that breaking a word from the recto page to the verso page should be avoided. I can’t find such a rule in The Chicago Manual of Style. Is this a figment of my imagination? Also, what about breaking a word from the verso page to the recto page?
A. Chicago allows breaks from verso to recto but advises avoiding breaks from recto to verso if at all possible. (Sometimes such a break may be needed to prevent an especially loose line.) See paragraph 2.121 in CMOS 18 for these and related considerations.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. In sports, does the score require a hyphen or should you use an en dash? What about decisions on the Supreme Court?
A. Let’s say the Washington Wizards beat the Los Angeles Lakers 100–99. Normally, the en dash is used to express a range—from x up to and including y. The expression 100–99 does not express a range—it expresses two separate values. Nonetheless, we’ve decided that because we say “one hundred to ninety-nine,” an en dash is better than a hyphen. In the same vein, when the Supreme Court decides something five votes to four, use an en dash rather than a hyphen: 5–4 (not 5-4). For a fuller statement of the rule and more examples, see CMOS 6.83.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Is it your recommendation to still use a hyphen in a phrases like “mid-1985”? If so, then would it be best to write “mid- to late 1985”?
Q. Do you recommend using a hyphen when spelling out the time of day?
A. Our rule is to reserve hyphens for the naturally hyphenated cardinal number:
eight forty-five; five fifteen; three thirty
But add a hyphen when the time of day precedes and modifies a noun, unless part of the expression is already hyphenated:
three-thirty train; eight forty-five appointment
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I have a hyphenation question that I wasn’t able to resolve after reading CMOS or the Q&A page on your website. I am in a debate with a fellow attorney about the proper hyphenation for the phrase “explicitly-defined” when used in the context of “an explicitly-defined rule governing adoptions.” My colleague insists there should be no hyphen between “explicitly” and “defined.” I think that there should be a hyphen between the two words.
A. The CMOS rule, which you can find at paragraph 7.93 of the eighteenth edition, is to leave such compounds open. An ly strongly signals adverb—and adverbs cannot modify nouns by themselves. No hyphen is needed, then, to warn that the next word is not a noun but rather an adjective. There’s no such thing as “an explicitly rule,” so there is no chance of misreading “explicitly defined rule.”
That said, it has long been the practice elsewhere—among British writers, for example—to hyphenate ly + participle/adjective compounds. And American writers a century ago—Edith Wharton comes to mind (“the pallour of her delicately-hollowed face,” describing an exhausted Lily Bart toward the end of The House of Mirth [1905])—seemed always to use such hyphens (or at least their publishers did). The reasoning behind this approach may be that the ly so strongly telegraphs another modifier that the two might as well tie the knot.
So it is a matter not of who is right or wrong but of whose rule you are going to follow. We think that added to our logic is the small victory of avoiding a hyphen.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Now here’s one phrase I’ve always found difficult to hyphenate. “Foreign policy making elite,” referring to an elite making foreign policy. Would Chicago write “foreign policymaking elite”?