Q. In “number + noun” of the CMOS hyphenation table, you say “Hyphenated before a noun, otherwise open.” You include the following examples: “a one-and-a-half-inch hem” and “one and a half inches.” As “inch” is a noun and “one and a half” is a number/quantity, why not “one-and-a-half inches”?
Q. I’m in the process of editing an article and the author is using a neologism of sorts. He’s taken the word digital and is using it as a verb—digitaling. The author is insisting on adding a hyphen (digital-ing) so that it’s clearer to the reader. I think it’s unnecessary, as there would be no confusion without it.
Q. Dear Chicago experts, can you please help resolve this hyphenation issue? Should it be “worm composting expert” or “worm-composting expert”? Should it be “worm composting master” or “worm-composting master”? Thank you very much.
Q. How would you punctuate an invented noun? I am editing a theoretical work that uses adjective + -ness to come up with new forms of abstract concepts along the lines of Americanness and pinkness. For both of those words, I would close the suffix and omit the hyphen; my author has them separated with a hyphen (pink-ness). Which is correct style?
Q. Is it OK to hyphenate a word at the end of a line that is already a hyphenated word? It looks really awkward to me, and I always call attention to this double hyphenation when I am editing/copyediting. Am I being too prissy? I can’t find anything about this in Chicago.
Q. Do I not have the hyphenation correct in phrases like “3-D printing” and “2-D projection”? I figure that they feature an abbreviation of the word dimensional being used as an attributive compound adjective, so they do call for hyphenation. I ask because one often encounters the abbreviations styled as 3D and 2D. Am I being overly fussy?
Q. Does half need a hyphen when modifying a verb? For example, “He half listened to her story” or “She half walked, half ran.”
Q. In mathematics it is common to refer to an important construction or theorem due to several authors by joining their names together with hyphens. For example, one often refers to the Cartan-Eilenberg spectral sequence for the spectral sequence of Cartan and Eilenberg. There seems to be room for confusion when an author’s name is already hyphenated. For example, some authors refer to the conjecture of Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer as the Birch-Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture, whereas others write the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture. Is there a style which you recommend?
Q. My colleagues in marketing add a full space before and after a hyphen rather than using a dash without spaces. I agree with CMOS on the proper uses of hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes, but haven’t seen any direction about the spaces before and after these characters. I tend to kern a little air between the beginning and end of a dash if the font jams them together, but it is nothing remotely close to a full space.
Q. Do you recommend using suspended compounds and hyphenation in the following cases? hard- and software; up- and downgrade.