Q. Is impactful a word and can it be used in place of influential?
A. Absolutely. Impactful is a word, and it is often used in place of influential. But like irregardless, ain’t, and alright (all of which are words in the dictionary), impactful is frowned upon as nonstandard English. Please see CMOS 5.250, under impact; impactful: “Avoid impactful, which is jargon (replacements include influential and powerful).”
Q. Hi—I have researched this but would like a definitive answer. Is it “cell phone” or “cellphone”? Merriam-Webster shows it as “cell phone” but “smartphone” is one word.
A. For “definitive” answers, you can’t beat the dictionary! Even CMOS checks in with Merriam-Webster now and then.
Q. Hello. I wonder where in the CMOS might lie hidden the answer to the following question: should I refer readers to “Table 1, in contrast to Tables 2 and 3,” or to “Table 1, in contrast to tables 2 and 3”? In other words, should all items in a numbered series such as tables, sections, chapters, etc., be capitalized in such references? A minipoll among colleagues has yielded mixed results; hence my appeal to the Ultimate Authority in Such Matters.
Q. Is sizable or sizeable the preferred American English spelling? Our searches have come up with conflicting answers.
A. If your searches give you conflicting answers, you can be fairly certain that there is no significant preference. But a dictionary will tell you whether one is preferred. The entry in Merriam-Webster is this:
sizable or sizeable
and the front matter of the dictionary (or its Help page online) gives this explanation of how to read entries:
When a main entry is followed by the word or and another spelling, the two spellings occur with equal or nearly equal frequency and can be considered equal variants. . . . If two variants joined by or are out of alphabetical order, they remain equal variants. The one printed first is, however, slightly more common than the second. . . . When another spelling is joined to the main entry by the word also, the spelling after also occurs appreciably less often and thus is considered a secondary variant.
Thus sizable and sizeable are equal variants.
Q. I edit in the field of foods quite frequently and I see family-sized portion or medium-sized bowl and I’m inclined to think hyphenation with size should follow more after fun-size candy bar, but I haven’t come across any ruling one way or the other. Where I can, I delete it entirely (medium bowl) but other times it just really works to use a hyphenated phrase. I didn’t see a clear ruling or related ruling in your hyphenation table (CMOS 7.89). I also read through paragraph 5.92 on phrasal adjectives, and point 5 seemed the closest to addressing the issue. Perhaps sized reduces to size when hyphenated? I welcome and thank you for any answers to this question.
A. You can look up -size in a dictionary and see that -size and -sized are accepted variants and are normally hyphenated. It’s a good idea to choose one style or the other to use throughout a document.
Q. In formal writing, I have been shown by my coworkers that U.S. is the way to write United States. However, I was always told that very few abbreviations are to be used in formal writing, and the abbreviation U.S. should never be used in replacement of United States when writing federal documents.
A. Until the 17th edition, Chicago style was to spell out the noun in running text, but abbreviate the adjective as US. Now, we allow US as a noun, but only if the meaning is clear from context—that is, the usage is subject to editorial discretion. See CMOS 10.32. (Note that the federal government doesn’t necessarily follow Chicago style, however!)
Q. What is the CMOS position on how to reference the titles of posters (such as those presented at professional conferences) in the body of a document? Should the title be in quotation marks, italicized, or something else?
A. If you type poster into the Search box or look under poster in the index, you’ll find an example at CMOS 14.217 showing that we quote such titles: “Implicit Causality Biases Influence Relative Clause Attachment.”
Q. If you are referring to a specific war, like World War II, do you capitalize the word war even when you’re not attaching the full title, or leave it uncapitalized? For example, should I capitalize or not in the following sentence? The political fallout from the war was that Russia occupied East Germany.
A. If you type war into the Search box or look under war in the index, you’ll find examples at CMOS 8.113: World War I, Vietnam War, the war, the two world wars, etc.
Q. Why is it so hard to find things in CMOS?
A. It must be just one of those things. If only there were a search box, or an index . . .
Q. I am copyediting an article about a brand of software. The article repeatedly uses the term dialog, but Merriam-Webster prefers the spelling dialogue. However, the software uses dialog in all its documentation. Which spelling does CMOS prefer in this case? Thank you.
A. Merriam-Webster shows dialog as a “secondary variant,” which means that it is standard English and may be used according to preference. Typing dialogue into the CMOS Search box, I see that CMOS happens to use that form but makes an exception for “dialog box.” And in fact, Merriam-Webster has an entry for “dialog box” (“a window on a computer screen for choosing options or inputting information”). Context is important.