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.
A. Use a hyphen; it makes it clear that the expert or master is not a worm.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
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?
A. Chicago style leans the way you do, generally closing up suffixes unless a spelling is awkward. Pinkness and Americanness seem pretty straightforward without hyphens, but that’s an editorial decision rather than a pronouncement that they’re “correct.” If a word isn’t in the dictionary, the writer must decide on a styling, knowing that others might choose differently.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
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.
A. CMOS covers this in paragraph 2.112: “When it is a question of an intelligible but nonstandard word break for a line that would otherwise be too loose or too tight, the nonstandard break (such as the hyphenation of an already hyphenated term) may be preferred.” In other words, sometimes the ugliness of a double break is preferable to the ugliness of bad spacing.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
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.”
A. No hyphen—half may be treated like other adverbs. He barely listened; he half listened. She quickly walked; she half walked.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
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?
A. Since using two hyphens (or an en dash and a hyphen) would be confusing, use and instead.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
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.
A. Please see CMOS 2.14: “For an em dash—one that indicates a break in a sentence like this—either use the em dash character on your word processor or type two hyphens (leave no space on either side).”
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Do you recommend using suspended compounds and hyphenation in the following cases? hard- and software; up- and downgrade.
A. Maybe on Twitter. Otherwise, the awkwardness outweighs the economy.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Hello, my question concerns hyphenating the term “anti-Second Amendment.” Wherever I see it, it is hyphenated as in my first sentence, but if the purpose of the hyphen is to let the reader know which of the words are linked, then “anti Second-Amendment” would seem to make more sense. But my spelling checker flags this alternate hyphenation. Is this an instance where we would be justified breaking the rule?
A. First, capitalized proper nouns are rarely hyphenated. The job of a hyphen is to link two words. The capital letters in a proper noun do that job very well; a hyphen is usually overkill. Second, Chicago style does not use a hyphen to link a prefix (like anti-) to an open compound. We require an en dash (anti–Second Amendment), because a hyphen would link only anti and Second, leaving us with an amendment that is “anti-Second.”
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. How does one, using a word processor, make an em dash/en dash distinguishable from a hyphen?
A. You might have noticed that when you type two hyphens with no spaces around them in MS Word, your computer turns them into an em dash if your automatic formatting settings are on. (If you type spaces around the hyphens, Word supplies an en dash.) You can type an em dash on purpose using the keystrokes Control+Alt+Minus (the Minus key is on the numeric keypad). To type an en dash, try Control+Minus. Or go to Insert > Symbol > More Symbols, and click on the Special Characters tab to find both of these marks and others. For Mac applications and those other than Word, search online for “type [punctuation mark] in [your application].”
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]