Plurals

Q. CMOS 7.12 says, “If an italicized term such as the title of a newspaper or book or a word used as a word must be written in the plural, the s is normally set in roman. A title already in plural form, however, may be left unchanged.” The example given is “four New York Times.” If the CMOS considers the name of that newspaper to be plural, that suggests it would find this sentence acceptable: “The New York Times are the paper of record.”

A. Not really. Although the word “times” is plural, the name of a newspaper is by convention treated as a singular entity. You could write “four New York Timeses,” but it would look funny and not be any more clear than “four New York Times.”

[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]