Q. I know an em dash marks an interruption in dialogue:
“I thought I might—”
“Might what?” she demanded.
But what happens if the same person speaks after the interruption? For example, “Can you bring me a— socket wrench, is that what you call it?” Is that space after the em dash correct?
A. Your space after the dash does makes a little bit of sense—but it doesn’t quite work. Because even if there is some logic to it, will people read that space as you intended it? Very possibly not, and definitely not if the dash happens to fall at the end of a line—as dashes are prone to do. Any editorial decision that is likely to be missed by readers or obscured by context—or that could be lost if quoted (for example, by someone following a style that puts a space before and after a dash, which would render your example meaningless)—is one that should be reconsidered.
So, either delete the space:
“Can you bring me a—socket wrench, is that what you call it?”
Or, if you want to somehow convey the extra pause or break that the space is trying to communicate, mark the interruption in some other way:
“Can you bring me a . . . socket wrench—is that what you call it?”
“Can you bring me a—what do you call it?—a socket wrench?”
“Can you bring me a”—he hesitated—“a socket wrench? Is that what you call it?”
In sum, be wary of any editorial innovation that relies on a mere space to get across the intended meaning. It has a good chance of being lost in translation.
Q. Should “time travel” be hyphenated as a verb? CMOS 5.25 says it’s okay to use nouns as verbs, but there are no two-word examples. “Time travel” isn’t even in M-W!
A. According to our hyphenation guide at CMOS 7.89 (sec. 2, “phrases, verbal”), a verb phrase that doesn’t appear in the dictionary may be left open. Each of the examples in CMOS also appears in Merriam-Webster (where it is either closed, hyphenated, or open): babysit, handcraft, air-condition, fast-talk, strong-arm, sucker punch. Because “time travel” does not, it may be left open. (By the way, if you figure out how to travel through time, or time travel, and end up crossing paths with the Time Traveler from the classic novel by H. G. Wells, please say hello from us.)
Q. CMOS does not mention uses of the en dash for conflict or connection, as in “the liberal–conservative debate” or “the Radical–Unionist coalition.” Should it be inferred that CMOS opposes such uses?
A. CMOS would never oppose the consistent application of sound editorial logic, but we try to tailor our recommendations to serve both editors and readers. En dashes bump up against the limits of this goal. Editors tend to love them, but readers who haven’t been editors or proofreaders may not even notice them. If Chicago has resisted adding the sense of “between” or “and” to the more common use of the en dash as “to,” that’s the primary reason (see CMOS 6.80).
Because we do see the value of using an en dash in a phrase like “Ali–Frazier fight” or “Epstein–Barr virus.” Those dashes signal that you’re not referring to a fight or a virus that involves somebody with a hyphenated last name. And we wouldn’t want a “liberal–conservative debate” to be read as a debate about conservatives who are liberal, as a hyphen might imply. But if readers won’t get this from those en dashes (most of us—even those of us who can discern an en dash from a hyphen—will rely on context to figure out the intended meaning), is it worth an editor’s trouble to apply them?
True, we already take the time to convert hyphens to en dashes in number ranges, mostly because we know that “99–100” is a hair more legible than “99-100.” But pattern matching makes this easy to do. And we usually replace a hyphen with an en dash in “pre–Civil War” and the like—in the possibly vain hope that readers are more likely to see at a glance that it’s not a war that’s “pre-Civil.”
But we would need to be confident that more readers have become en dash literate before adding to our existing recommendations. If that ever happens, Chicago’s recommended uses for the character also known as Unicode 2013 may end up expanding.
Q. Hi! Your guidelines for hyphenating a compound modifier before a noun cite clarity as a primary reason for doing so. But what if the compound modifier is enclosed in parentheses, such as in the phrase “global (big picture) revision”? Obviously I would hyphenate “big picture” before a noun if that modifier wasn’t enclosed in parentheses, but in this example clarity is not an issue. What say y’all?
A. Parentheses make hyphenation unnecessary except for terms that would be hyphenated in any position. So you would be right to write “big-picture revision” but “global (big picture) revision.” The same principle applies to quotation marks: Our error-prone editor, resorting to his favorite excuse, reminded us that this would be a “big picture” revision only.
Q. I know that you use “to” and not an en dash with “from”: “from 2012 to 2016 (not from 2012–16).” But what about with “for”? Should it be “for 25 to 30 minutes” or “for 25–30 minutes”?
A. An en dash is allowed in number ranges preceded by “for”: “for 25–30 minutes.” The same goes for “in”: “in 25–30 minutes.” Try this test: if the expression would still make sense with only half the range, then an en dash would be correct (though it is always permissible to use “to” instead). “We stood there for 25 minutes” and “we completed the survey in 25 minutes” are both unambiguous. On the other hand, “we lived there from 2012,” though it is sometimes encountered in speech, is incomplete (from 2012 to when?). The preposition “between”—which pairs with “and” rather than “to”—fails the test even more conclusively (try it).
Q. I understood that compounds formed with prefixes are normally closed. However, I see a hyphen used on television and in print with all sorts of prefixes—for example, “co-founder” or “non-violent.” Are compounds formed with prefixes still normally closed? Or has spellcheck run amok?
A. Don’t worry, compounds formed with prefixes are still usually closed (see our hyphenation guide, section 4, under CMOS 7.89). But the truth about hyphens is that they tend to make compounds more legible rather than less. The deconstructionists understood this when they used a hyphen to show that the apparently straightforward act of re-membering involves piecing together the fragments of the past. But use hyphens sparingly, and only when they are truly needed. Chicago advises retaining a hyphen to prevent a doubled a or i (“intra-arterial,” “anti-intellectual”) and for certain words that might look odd without one (“pro-life,” “pro-choice”). A hyphen is also required next to a proper noun (“sub-Saharan”) or a numeral (“pre-1950”). In rare cases, a hyphen can distinguish between two meanings of a word (“recreate” vs. “re-create”). And though “cofounder” is frequently hyphenated (“co-founder” is the second-listed of equal variants in Merriam-Webster), “nonviolent” is more likely to appear closed—and neither requires a hyphen in Chicago style.
Q. It’s 2020. Can we please stop using a hyphen in “dropdown”?
A. According to the Apple Style Guide (dated December 2019), the term shouldn’t be used at all:
drop-down menu. Don’t use; use menu.
The Microsoft Writing Style Guide allows it, but only for an audience that includes developers:
It’s OK to use drop-down as an adjective in content for developers if you need to describe the type of UI item or how it works.
Apparently the user interface works by a sort of magic whose secrets are revealed only to magicians. Part of that magic may have something to do with the hyphen in “drop-down,” so it’s probably best not to meddle. On the other hand, Merriam-Webster lists “drop-down” and “dropdown” as equal variants for the noun form (the adjective form is always hyphenated), so maybe there’s hope for you. Just don’t tell Microsoft: according to the Microsoft guide, the noun form is verboten.
Q. Can Chicago please provide clarification on hyphenation when “high school” is used as an adjective? For instance, do you prefer “middle and high school students” or “middle- and high-school students”? Why? One never sees “high-school curriculum” or “high-school classroom” in educational writing, but I don’t fully understand how the rules are applied toward permanent compounds used as adjectives in CMOS. Thank you!
A. It wouldn’t be incorrect to write “middle- and high-school students.” But both “middle school” and “high school” are listed in Merriam-Webster as unhyphenated noun phrases; when they are used attributively, they can remain unhyphenated.
In general, any compound that’s rarely hyphenated in real life can remain unhyphenated as a phrasal adjective if the meaning remains clear without the hyphen. This goes double for any compound that’s listed in a dictionary without the hyphen. So write “middle and high school students.”
On the other hand, if a compound is listed in the dictionary as a hyphenated phrasal adjective, Chicago style gives you permission to drop the hyphen in most cases when the compound follows the noun that it modifies (see CMOS 7.85). For example, a high-strung high school student would be, according to Chicago style, high strung (contra Merriam-Webster).
For specific examples and common exceptions, consult our hyphenation table at CMOS 7.89. If you’re still in doubt, hyphenate before the noun but not after.
Q. Lately I see more and more hyphenated -ly phrases, especially in digital communication—e.g., “a hastily-made decision.” Is this just my cognitive bias inventing a trend that isn’t there, or have your editors noticed more -ly hyphens as well? I know they’re more unnecessary than incorrect, so am I being fussy to mark them for deletion if they’re used consistently and doing no real harm to reader comprehension? Thanks as always for your insight.
A. We haven’t noticed such a trend. Actually many years ago such hyphens were a lot more common than they are today. For example, in the first edition of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859), there were about fifty such hyphens. But we’ve evolved since then to recognize the -ly species as mainly adverbial in nature. You can therefore delete any mutant, atavistic hyphens that cross your path.
Q. In a recent Q&A the hyphens look like en dashes to me. Are they, and if they are, why?
A. You must be referring to the main entries for “fund-raiser” and “fund-raising” in the screenshot from the first printing of the 11th edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. Those do look like en dashes, but they are presented that way for maximum legibility: for one thing, regular hyphens might be confused with the centered dots that indicate places where a hyphen may be added to divide a word at the end of a line. In other words, “fund–rais·er” is easier to interpret at a glance as a hyphenated term than “fund-rais·er” would be. For what it’s worth, at Merriam-Webster.com, the hyphens in main entries are really hyphens. For the entry words online, however, M-W uses the font Playfair Display, which has the advantage of featuring generously long hyphens. This matters a bit less in the online version of the dictionary, where suggested word division is shown on a separate line, below the main entry (and in a different font that happens to feature shorter hyphens). But as this screenshot from the definition for “self-conscious” shows, the extra-long hyphen is strikingly legible:
