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).