Q. Is it ever correct to use “roadtrip” versus “road trip”?
A. If you write roadtrip as one word because that’s simply what you prefer, then you can establish that as your style through repetition of the word. But unless you’re writing poetry or fiction, you’re probably better off choosing the form that readers will expect.
As a simple n-gram will show, two-word road trip is many times more common than one-word roadtrip in published books. Most dictionaries don’t even record roadtrip. Wiktionary, which had more than 1.3 million entries for English terms as of August 1, 2026, is an exception. (For that number, see Wiktionary’s “Statistics” page, under English. That doesn’t count the many terms from other languages that are defined in English-language Wiktionary, including the German Roadtrip, borrowed from English but spelled as one word and, because it’s a noun, capitalized.)
As for whether the one-word form is “correct” (in English, that is), there’s no law that dictates how compounds are formed; whether any two words remain open or closed depends on common usage and may change over time, as in the case of to day > to-day > today (see the entry for today at OED.com). But if you’re planning on road-tripping, you should probably pack some extra hyphens.
See also CMOS 7.89 (on the trend toward closed compounds) and 11.42 (on German capitalization).
Q. Hi, CMOS editors: Would you hyphenate “five times” in “a five times increase”? And if so, would it be “five-times” or “five-time”?
A. We would write “a fivefold increase,” assuming you mean to say that something has grown by a factor of five (e.g., increasing from 10 to 50). And though you could say instead that this same thing grew to five times the original amount, “five times” isn’t normally used as a modifier in the way that “fivefold” is; “five-time increase” won’t work either, unless you mean that something increased on five separate occasions (which says nothing about how much it increased overall).
Another thing to keep in mind: A fivefold increase is 500 percent of the original, but it’s only a 400 percent increase, not a 500 percent increase. For example, 50 is 500 percent of 10 (or five times as much), but that’s an increase of only 40, which is 400 percent of the original 10.
Q. When using a preceding -ly adverb to modify an adjective, it typically pains me to use an open form (no hyphenation). But I bite the bullet, follow CMOS, and eliminate the hyphen. Yet when there are two essentially equivalent formulations where one adverb is an -ly adverb and the other is not, I’m perplexed as to the logic. For instance: She had a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of baseball statistics versus She had an almost-encyclopedic knowledge of baseball statistics. Can you provide any insights? Thank you.
A. Okay, so you have a deeply-rooted dislike—as Jane Austen’s publisher styled that phrase in the 1813 first edition of Pride and Prejudice, vol. 2, p. 124—for the modern rule that says that you should write deeply rooted dislike (as covered in CMOS 7.96, section 2, under “adverb ending in ‑ly + participle or adjective”). We’re not offended. The idea that readers will expect an adjective rather than a noun after a word like deeply and thus don’t need any help from a hyphen could easily be turned on its head. You could argue instead that the adverb and participle clearly belong together and should go ahead and tie the knot (with a hyphen).
But if you do follow Chicago style, don’t worry about being inconsistent in the examples you cite. Our editors would tend to leave the compound modifiers in both of your sentences open: a nearly encyclopedic knowledge and an almost encyclopedic knowledge. See CMOS 7.96, section 2, but this time under “adverb not ending in ‑ly + participle or adjective,” which notes that “certain compounds, including those with more, most, less, least, and very, can usually be left open unless ambiguity threatens.”
As one of the examples in that category suggests (“a rather boring play”), you can extend this exception to other adverbs of degree, including not only rather but also almost.
We’ll make a note to consider clarifying this in a future edition of CMOS. It’s less likely, however, that we’ll be revising our rules to be more in line with nineteenth-century hyphenation conventions.
Q. I am working with some marketing copy for the back cover of a book that has a three-word title with a period after each word. To my reading, it looks awkward in body copy to include all these periods. I might suggest using commas instead of periods to convey there isn’t a full stop at the end of each word. Does this sound reasonable to you?
A. That sounds reasonable, though it could depend on your title. Let’s say that your book has the following title on its cover and title page:
Lather.
Rinse.
Repeat.
Referring to Lather, Rinse, Repeat in the text would keep readers from stumbling while retaining the sense of the title. But let’s say a different (also hypothetical) book had this on its cover and title page:
I.
Don’t.
Care.
Referring to that title as I, Don’t, Care rather than I. Don’t. Care. would ruin the staccato effect of those periods. It would be better, in that case, to embrace the spirit of that title and defy convention.
Q. I’m having trouble finding guidance in CMOS about the minimum length of the final line of a paragraph (anywhere on the page). When proofreading, how do we determine whether a line is too short (or a “runt”)? I learned that it’s four characters minimum, but I can’t find CMOS confirmation of that. And then can an ellipsis be on a line on its own, and if not, should copyeditors use a nonbreaking space before a paragraph-ending ellipsis? What if there’s a closing quotation mark after it? Thanks!
A. According to CMOS 2.121 (on proofreading for overall appearance), “The last word in any paragraph must not be hyphenated unless at least four letters (in addition to any punctuation) are carried over to the final line.” You can extend this to mean that a paragraph-ending word on its own line should ideally be at least four letters long. But whatever your definition of what constitutes a “runt line,” it’s mostly a matter of taste (and applies only to print and other fixed layouts). Some publishers set a minimum of three letters; others go with as many as five. If in doubt, proofreaders should ask before starting in on the text.
As for ellipses, a paragraph-ending ellipsis on a line by itself, even if it’s followed by a quotation mark, is best avoided if you’re following a four-letter-plus-punctuation minimum (you can ignore the spaces between the dots and count the ellipsis as equivalent to a three-letter word). It’s probably best avoided anyway so it’s not mistaken for a section break.
Copyeditors, however, don’t usually decide such things. Though it’s generally a good idea to insert nonbreaking spaces within your ellipses to keep them from breaking at the end of a line as you edit (which can be annoying for you and anyone who reviews the document), you can usually leave decisions about paragraph endings to the typesetter or whoever will be preparing the document for publication.
See also CMOS 12.59–69 (on ellipses).
Q. A magazine article I want to cite lists the issue’s date as December 25 through January 7, 1973. How should I go about citing this, and where should I place the year considering it starts in 1972 but ends in 1973?
A. That sounds like a double issue. You didn’t specify the magazine, so let’s cite something that appeared in the last printed edition of The New Yorker from 2025. The date on that cover is recorded as “DEC. 29, 2025 & JAN. 5, 2026.” Here’s how we’d cite an article from that issue:
1. Alex Abramovich, “Last Highway: How Willie Nelson Sees America,” Profiles, New Yorker, Dec. 29, 2025, and Jan. 5, 2026 (double issue).
You don’t have to clarify that it’s a double issue, but it can’t hurt to do so. And though we’ve abbreviated the months, that’s also optional; if you do it for one citation, however, do it for all (see also CMOS 10.44).
Finally, some articles, like the one above, may have been published online. If so, use the info for that version to cite it:
1. Alex Abramovich, “How Willie Nelson Sees America,” Profiles, New Yorker, Dec. 22, 2025, https://www
That version includes the following statement at the end of the article (in italics):
Published in the print edition of the December 29, 2025 & January 5, 2026, issue, with the headline “Last Highway.”
But you don’t have to include that in your citation.
August Q&A
Q. If a title uses “as well as” as a conjunction meaning “and,” should it be lowercase in Chicago-style title case, as in “Apples as well as Oranges”? I’m seeing some similar book titles with “Well” capitalized, but “Apples as Well as Oranges” seems as if it could be misread.
A. First, “as well as” isn’t one of the common coordinating conjunctions named along with and in CMOS 8.160 (in rule 4). Second, even if the rule did extend to synonyms of those words, we would normally analyze the words in a phrase separately when applying title case. Accordingly, the adverb “Well” would get an initial cap, whereas the adverb/conjunction “as” would remain lowercase (per rule 5, which specifies that the word as remains lowercase in any grammatical function).
Chicago’s title-case rules, which are meant for titles mentioned in text or as part of a source citation, favor editorial expediency over aesthetic considerations. On a book cover or title page or the like, a designer may choose to de-emphasize a phrase like “as well as” by using lowercase letters or a smaller font (or both). See CMOS 8.158 for more details.
Extra credit: Starting with the 18th edition of CMOS, prepositions of more than four letters are capitalized in titles. Until then, prepositions were lowercased “regardless of length” (a clarification added to the 12th edition, published in 1969). This led some editors (including our own) to apply lowercase to phrasal prepositions like “according to,” as in “The Gospel according to Matthew,” which we’d now style as “The Gospel According to Matthew.” Not only is “according to” longer than four letters, but “according” by itself is a participle, not a preposition.
Q. If I have two separate quotations joined by and, do I use commas before and after and? For example: She said, “Get out of here,” and, “I’m so in love with you.”
A. Those two commas are defensible if you read “and” as shorthand for “and she also said.” But that’s asking those commas to do a lot of work. Try leaving them out:
She said, “Get out of here” and “I’m so in love with you.”
But what’s going on here? Were these two statements made on separate occasions, or did one follow the other? Consider giving readers a bit more to go on than a simple conjunction. For example:
She said, “Get out of here,” and then, “I’m so in love with you.”
You could still omit the second and third commas from that version, especially if your text features open rather than close punctuation (the links are to the entries for those terms in Merriam-Webster; see senses 17 and 16, respectively, under the adjectives). In other words, there isn’t a strict right and wrong here (even the comma after said is a matter of convention rather than logic; see CMOS 12.14). See also CMOS 6.16.
Q. In the name Joaquín “el Chapo” Guzmán, should the definite article be capitalized? My reading of CMOS 8.5 and 8.35 seems to suggest that “el” should be lowercased in running text and capitalized only when it appears at the beginning of a sentence. Thank you for your time and guidance!
A. In both Spanish and English, spell the definite article with an initial cap when such a nickname is placed in quotation marks and offered as an alternative form of the name rather than as part of the name or as a purely descriptive epithet (as in the two examples featuring Ivan, who isn’t usually referred to by his epithet alone):
Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán
Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen
but
Ivan the Terrible or Ivan IV, “the Terrible”
In subsequent mentions (without quotation marks), an initial cap helps to differentiate Spanish-language names from the surrounding English-language text but is usually unnecessary for names in English. In other words, you can refer to El Chapo (capital E) but the Boss (lowercase t), though fans of the rock icon might prefer that you call him The Boss.
Q. When using a letter + noun, should there always be a hyphen, never be a hyphen, or something in between? Specifically, something like “k value” or “k curve”?
A. According to section 5.4.1.2 in the ninth edition of The CSE Manual (published in 2024 by the Council of Science Editors in cooperation with the University of Chicago Press), letters that are used in scientific terms as modifiers can remain unhyphenated except when the term itself is a modifier before a noun: “S curve” but “S-curve characteristics.” You’ll also find “S curve” as an example in CMOS, under paragraph 7.70.
You’d also want a hyphen when the letter is paired with a participle before another noun, as in “k-shaped curve,” an expression that works better with a capital K, whose diagonal strokes more clearly suggest the idea of a graph with diverging values: “K-shaped curve.”
There are some exceptions. For example, we would refer to the “x-axis” (following Merriam-Webster—except for the italics, which aren’t usually shown in dictionary headwords; we italicize the label because it derives from the mathematical variable x). Another exception is “x-ray,” which is hyphenated as a matter of established usage and often spelled with a capital “X” (but without italics, maybe because the letter simply meant that the type of radiation was a mystery when it was first described, as suggested under “Word Origin” in Merriam-Webster’s entry for the term and by the term’s etymology in the OED).
Q. I’m a book editor. The designer I work with and I seem to have been trained in different decades. We differ on whether a page number in a TOC that has chapter titles that run to multiple lines should align with the top line, or (as I think) should align on the last line of the heading. I can’t find an answer in Chicago. What say you, CMOS?
A. By default, both Microsoft Word and Adobe InDesign align page numbers on the last line of an entry that runs to more than one line in their automated tables of contents. And if your TOC includes leader dots (a row of dots that connects the last word of a chapter title or other TOC entry to the corresponding page number to its right), you shouldn’t try to alter this behavior. Ditto if the page numbers simply follow the last word in each entry (after a space) instead of being placed flush right.
But even if your TOC is formatted as a conventional table and doesn’t feature leader dots, aligning the number with the last line of a chapter title that runs to more than one line syncs with our advice for aligning rows in tables where only the first column runs to more than one line (CMOS 3.71 and fig. 3.14).
So we’d tend to side with you in this case. For a real-life example that illustrates this principle of book design, follow the Google Preview link at the University of Chicago Press’s page for Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (ed. and trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, 2000) and scroll through that book’s lengthy table of contents.
Q. In a bibliography, how do you cite a decades-old document kept in hard copy by an individual? Is it “From the personal archives of . . .”?
A. Yes, that would work. Though assuming the document you’re citing remains with the individual in question, we would suggest replacing “From” with “In.” See also CMOS 14.129.
Q. Regarding the citation of specific times in videos and the like, CMOS 14.58 provides this example (for an audiobook): “at 3 hr., 14 min.” But many sources use the format HH:MM:SS. I’m just wondering what the preferred Chicago-style formatting for such times is, and whether the “at” should be included, or only where the presence of an audio or video duration may threaten ambiguity, similar to the inclusion/exclusion of “p.” and “pp.” mentioned at CMOS 14.50.
A. You can usually use the format shown for the time in the source itself, but doing so is not a requirement. For example, you can record “03:14:00” instead of “3 hr., 14 min.” if that’s how the timing displays in whatever platform you’re using to consult the cited source. The former is useful if you know that others will find the same thing when they consult the source (and it’s less awkward for timings with hours, minutes, and seconds), but the latter can be easier to interpret.
As for “at,” it is usually good to add that word before a specific time (as in a note) so that it doesn’t get mistaken for a duration or length. But if you cite a range, you can omit “at.” Instead, use an en dash or “to,” as in “03:14:00–03:19:00” or “3 hr., 14 min. to 3 hr., 19 min.” (note the absence of a comma after “14 min.”; the comma that follows “3 hr.” stands in for the word “and” rather than setting off “14 min.”). And if you spell out “to” rather than using a dash, you don’t usually need to write “from” before the range but may add it for clarity (see also CMOS 9.62).