Q. Both CMOS 10.27 and Merriam-Webster style “post-traumatic stress disorder” that way, with a hyphen, but it occurs to me that since PTSD takes hold in the wake of traumatic stress, the prefix post- applies to “traumatic stress.” So shouldn’t the spelled-out term be styled “post–traumatic stress disorder,” with an en dash?

A. You’re right: It would make sense to spell post-traumatic stress disorder with an en dash. In fact, we could have used your editorial wisdom back in 2003, when we added posttraumatic to the fifteenth edition of CMOS to show that the prefix post- forms one-word compounds even if the result is two consecutive t’s.

That decision would have reflected the spelling posttraumatic in a list of 125 compounds formed with post- under the entry for that prefix in the then-current tenth edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.

Still, we must have failed to register the hyphen in Merriam-Webster’s separate entry for post-traumatic stress disorder, which followed entries for posttranscriptional, posttransfusion, and posttranslational—all without hyphens. It’s clear in hindsight that, as you suggest, post-traumatic was hyphenated in that term (and not in the list of words formed with post-) for a reason, one that had nothing to do with consecutive t’s. (The latest iteration of Merriam-Webster, as of November 4, 2025, now hyphenates post-traumatic as a standalone term also.)

But the dictionary doesn’t do en dashes,* and in post-traumatic stress disorder, no one else seems to either (not even Wikipedia, which tends to feature a lot of en dashes compared with other publications). Instead, we’d advise saving your en dashes for more established uses (see CMOS 6.82–90—especially 6.86, on en dashes with compound adjectives).

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* The hyphenated main entries in printed editions of Merriam-Webster do feature en dashes rather than hyphens, but that’s presumably for the sake of legibility in very small type and therefore doesn’t count (see also this related Q&A).

Q. What’s the best way to format a euphemized profanity like “the f-word”? Should the initial letter of the profanity (in this case “f”) be italicized? Is a hyphen appropriate? Thank you!

A. Italics, maybe; hyphen, yes. We’d start with the entry for the term in Merriam-Webster, where it’s “the f-word” or “the F-word”; the two forms are equal variants, but we usually go with the first-listed term.

Then, considering that dictionaries don’t do italics in their entry words, you could apply Chicago style for letters used as letters and italicize the f—as in f-word. But most editors would probably leave that f alone.

See, for example, The F-Word, edited by Jesse Sheidlower (4th ed., Oxford University Press, 2024), which has “the F-word,” capital F, no hyphen—except on the cover, where the title is in all caps and the actual f-word is spelled out but obscured (except for the F) by what looks like a black Sharpie. On the title page, it’s “The F-Word” (capital F and W), which is in keeping with Chicago’s latest advice on capitalizing hyphenated terms in titles (see CMOS 8.162).

For more advice on handling expletives, see CMOS 6.99. For the grammatical term expletive, see 5.246.

Q. “Neither I/me nor my dog responded.” Should it be “me” or “I”?

A. The correct form of pronoun in sentences like yours can usually be figured out by considering the pronoun separately from the noun that it’s paired with. In your sentence, that process would look like this:

I/me didn’t respond.

plus

My dog didn’t respond.

equals

Neither I/me nor my dog responded.

If your goal is to use Standard English, the correct form would be “I didn’t respond,” which answers your question: “Neither I nor my dog responded.” See also CMOS 5.44; for more on Standard English, see 5.4.

Q. Good morning! I have a question about CMOS 8.183 (18th ed.). It says that a very long poetic work is usually italicized but that shorter poems are set in roman and enclosed in quotation marks. What is the cutoff point that distinguishes a longish short poem from a truly long poem? At what point do you stop putting poems in quotation marks and start putting them in italics? Thank you for your wonderful Q&A section!

Q. Could you clarify which texts—specifically sacred and ancient ones—should be written in roman type rather than italics? Is there a cutoff date for something to be considered “ancient”? Does it matter if an ancient text is sacred, literary, or philosophical? Is there some authority that rules whether a text is considered sacred? For example, some consider the Analects as sacred, but that title is widely italicized. Please advise.

A. Some of the advice in CMOS is there mainly to acknowledge how the rest of the world does things rather than to set a rule. Paragraphs 8.183 and (for the second question) 8.104 are in this category. Together, they amount to something like this: Note: Some titles may be treated differently from what we advise elsewhere. Here are a few examples.

This advice is supposed to warn people that one doesn’t generally refer, for example, to The Bible or Dante’s “Inferno” or Shakespeare’s Sonnets—stylings that might seem right based on the advice elsewhere in CMOS. Instead, that would be the Bible and Dante’s Inferno and Shakespeare’s Sonnets—not because we say so but because that’s the convention. And there’s no magic cutoff point. If the Analects of Confucius are normally italicized in your readings, then use italics.

The same thing goes for poems. Is it “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” or The Rime of the Ancient Mariner? That one could go either way, but if you’re an editor, you know what to do: Choose the form that makes the most sense to you and be consistent about it.

Q. When writing out a citation on paper, should you underline instead of italicize?

A. Though you could try to approximate the look of italics with your handwriting, the convention for handwritten text is the same as it was in the days of the typewriter: underlining means italics. (The usual way to add underlining on a typewriter was to backspace over the letters to be underlined and then repeatedly press the underscore key, or _, the same key that’s typically paired with a hyphen on English-language QWERTY keyboards designed for use with desktops and laptops.)

Q. Hi! One of my authors wants to quote content from an app. It’s like a devotional or thought-of-the-day app, and the content is not available elsewhere online. What’s the best way to cite the material? Thank you!

A. No formal citation is needed. Instead, just make sure that the name of the app and the entity responsible for it (whether that’s a person or a company) have been clearly and accurately identified in the text as the source for the quotation.

Formal citations (as in a note or in a bibliography or reference list) can usually be limited to sources that readers could consult for themselves if they wanted to. Things that others wouldn’t be able to track down online or anywhere else (not even through a library) can usually be described in the text rather than cited in a footnote or the like.

Q. How would you format a credit line for a screenshot? Do you credit the person who took the screenshot or the website where the screenshot is from? For example, if a writer takes a screenshot of a notice on a website, do you cite the website, the writer, or both?

A. Unlike a photographer, the person who creates a screenshot doesn’t usually get credit. But if someone has added annotations or the like that aren’t part of the captured image, that fact should be made clear. For example, the caption and credit for this image—

—might read as follows:

The updated hyphenation guide includes linked cross-references to other terms and sections in the table. Reproduced by permission from The Chicago Manual of Style Online, 18th ed. (University of Chicago Press, 2024), 7.96; arrows added by the author.

See also CMOS 3.21–29 (for captions) and 3.30–38 (for credits).

Q. Should the names of birds be capitalized? For example, is it “little blue heron” or “Little Blue Heron” (a problem since “little” and “blue” can sound like descriptors and not part of a creature’s formal name)? Or “heron” generally and “Little Blue Heron” specifically?

A. In Chicago style, common names for birds are usually lowercased, whether you’re referring to a little blue heron or a blue-footed booby, and except for any proper noun or adjective (American crow). If you’re worried that it won’t be clear that you’re referring to a specific type of heron rather than to a heron of a particular size and color, revise your text accordingly (e.g., a bird known as the little blue heron).

It should be noted that organizations dedicated to animals tend to use initial capitals for common names (as on this page from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology), an approach that solves the problem of ambiguity. But in most types of prose, lowercase is the rule for such names. See also CMOS 8.129 and 8.130; for names like Egretta caerulea (the scientific name for the little blue heron), see 8.121.

Q. When should the name of a martial art be capitalized? I see very different practices, especially for the following martial arts: Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Kodokan judo, muay Thai, and Shotokan karate. Even more confusing, some martial arts (e.g., Gracie jiu-jitsu) are both brand names and martial arts. Help!!

A. The names of martial arts that have become well known in English can usually be lowercased except for any proper noun or adjective in the name. That’s what you’ve done in your list, except that we’d write Muay Thai (with a capital M). Either because the adjective Thai follows the name for the technique (muay, roughly analogous to boxing)—or, more likely, because muay isn’t a common word in English—nobody seems to write muay Thai (with a lowercase m).

As for brand names, you could model your usage on Scotch tape and keep the generic part lowercase, as in Gracie jiu-jitsu (see CMOS 8.154). But be prepared to make exceptions for official names of organizations and the like, as in the International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation. Note that we’ve retained jiu-jitsu over the common spelling jujitsu partly based on the spelling in the name of that organization.

In sum: Use lowercase for generic words that are common in English and be prepared to make exceptions.

Q. When writing about experiments it’s common to name things like samples as “sample A.” Should “sample” be capitalized, as “Sample A” is referring to a specific sample, or is “sample” acting as a descriptive title and “A” is the proper noun?

A. In Chicago style, most generic nouns remain lowercase when paired with a letter or number: page 14, section 1.3, chapter 5, table 2, figure A.1, appendix B, apartment 2D, suite B, stage II, type 1, grade 3 (see CMOS 9.8 for additional examples). Exceptions are reserved for course titles and other official names and designations—as in Economics 101 (the title of an introductory course on economics; see 8.87), Category 5 (the highest level on the Saffir–Simpson wind scale), or Title IX (the civil rights law). Our preference, then, would be to write “sample A” (with a small s).

Some guides, especially in the sciences, specify initial caps for certain parts of a document (as in Table 2 and Figure A.1); see The CSE Manual: Scientific Style and Format for Authors, Editors, and Publishers, 9th ed., sec. 9.3.3, and the AMA Manual of Style, 11th ed., sec. 10.4. But a sample isn’t in this category, so we’d recommend lowercase even in scientific usage (as in this 2024 article on polygenic embryo screening in vol. 7, issue 5, of JAMA Network Open, which has “sample 1” but “Figure 1A”).

For the en dash in “Saffir–Simpson,” see CMOS 6.85.

Q. Do we repeat the abbreviation in ordinal ranges? E.g., should I write “24th–25th” or “24–25th”? In the case of numbers with different ordinal abbreviations it seems the former is obviously preferable (“1–2nd” is obviously infelicitous), but if the two numbers take the same ordinal abbreviation, then it seems (arguably, marginally) better to not repeat unnecessarily.

A. Write ordinal ranges as they would be pronounced; in other words, repeat the ordinal ending in all cases (1st–2nd, 24th–25th, 101st–200th). Another way to look at this is that the ordinal ending is an integral part of an ordinal number and shouldn’t be omitted except in special cases.

One special case is for dates. Days of the month are typically written as cardinals in Chicago (and US) style, though they’re usually pronounced as ordinals: May 9 (pronounced May 9th). A range of days would also be written without ordinal endings: May 5–9. But when a day is used alone or ahead of the month, it’s normally expressed as an ordinal: the 9th of May or, in a range, the 5th–9th of May (where both ordinal endings are required). See also CMOS 9.33.

Note that when you spell out an ordinal, you should write through or to instead of using an en dash: first through tenth (not first–tenth). See also CMOS 6.83 (for en dashes) and 9.6 (for ordinals).

Q. I am writing a novella. One of my characters is a scientist. I do not know whether to write her name as Doctor Quimby or Dr. Quimby in narration or dialogue.

A. We get some version of this question a lot. The thread they all seem to share is a worry that an abbreviation (or more often a number) won’t look natural in dialogue. But though it’s true that people don’t normally speak an abbreviation as it’s spelled, the word Doctor is almost always abbreviated as a title before a name (regardless of the type of doctor). Plus, any reader (including text-to-speech applications) should know that Dr. is pronounced Doctor.

So unless you prefer the spelled-out form—there’s nothing wrong with spelling out Doctor—you can safely use the familiar abbreviation in all contexts, including dialogue. In other words, you can model your usage on the novella originally titled Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (by Robert Louis Stevenson; the abbreviations Dr. and Mr. appeared in both the title and text of the 1886 London first edition—and featured periods in the text but not on the title page or cover) rather than on Doctor Zhivago (the novel by Boris Pasternak, where Doctor in the title translates the unabbreviated Russian Доктор).

For more information about spelling out abbreviations and numbers in dialogue, see CMOS 12.51.

Q. Does CMOS have any suggestions for how to format the title of a playlist? Should it be put in quotes? Thank you!

A. Though CMOS doesn’t currently cover this topic, the title of a playlist can usually be placed in quotation marks (and capitalized in title case): “Copyeditor’s Baroque 1”; “Favorite Rarities”; “Walking Mix Fast.”

Though playlists are like albums (whose titles are italicized in Chicago style, as in Kind of Blue), they aren’t formally published like albums are, something italics might suggest. CMOS makes a similar distinction for the titles of theses and dissertations relative to published books; see CMOS 14.113.

Q. Dear CMOS, Would you please add guidance about how to cite a nonrecoverable source—i.e., a work that cannot be accessed or retrieved by a reader. For example, I was editing a conference paper that had this in the references list: eTerrestrial: an online Portal for terrestrial services, https://www.itu.int/ITU-R/eTerrestrial/eMIFR. Clicking on the eMIFR link in the conference paper brings up a web page that requires users to sign in. Because the tools in the eTerrestrial portal are inaccessible to everybody but members of the International Telecommunication Union, how should this source be cited?

A. In Chicago and other styles, source citations don’t generally require info about how to access the cited sources. For example, when you cite an article in an academic journal, you don’t need to clarify that readers may need a subscription or library access to read the article (or that they may need to pay a fee to get it).

This approach is necessary because access to most sources is limited in some way (sources don’t magically appear for anyone) and because any restrictions are subject to change without notice.

That said, there’s no rule against including such info in special cases. Here’s how we might add such information to your example, which we’ve adapted here for use with Chicago’s author-date system:

ITU (International Telecommunication Union). n.d. eMIFR (Master International Frequency Register tool). eTerrestrial: An Online Portal for Terrestrial Services. Accessed September 9, 2025. https://​www​.itu​.int​/ITU-R​/eTerrestrial​/eMIFR (requires a TIES [Telecommunication Information Exchange Services] account).

For the use of n.d. (no date) in author-date citations, see CMOS 14.104. For the use of abbreviations in author-date style for an organization as author, see 13.127.