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).

Q. In the following sentence, would you stet the comma before “then”? “I’ll just come at the end of May, then.”

A. When then is used as an adverb to mean “in that case,” a comma can be helpful but isn’t strictly required. If you prefer close punctuation (i.e., a liberal use of commas), then you may want to retain such a comma. If you prefer an open style (with fewer commas), you can usually leave it out. (See also CMOS 6.16.) Whatever your style, you should retain a comma whenever then might be misread as “at that time.”

This use of then is analogous to the use of too and either in the sense of also (see CMOS 6.56 and “Commas with ‘Too’ and ‘Either’ ” at CMOS Shop Talk). Some writers always add a comma before that kind of too or either (or two commas in the middle of a sentence); others use a comma only rarely, as when ambiguity threatens (unlikely with too or either) or to add emphasis.

Either approach, consistently and thoughtfully applied, can work well. Alrighty then, on to the next question.

Q. Is it “the angel Gabriel” or “the Angel Gabriel”?

A. Though it’s not exactly a job title, an angel can usually be treated like a writer or a poet relative to capitalization: Just as you would refer to the writer Jane Austen or the poet Maya Angelou (lowercase w and p), you’d refer to the angel (or archangel) Gabriel (lowercase a).

Q. Do typefaces or fonts used in a book or other document need to be credited? CMOS 4.106 makes me think they should, but maybe I misunderstood something.

A. That paragraph in CMOS is about crediting words and images borrowed from other sources and incorporated into your own work. Fonts* are in a different category. Any font licensed for public use that you’ve acquired legally can usually be used without credit.

This includes, for example, the fonts from Google Fonts, which can be downloaded for free and used in your publications or other documents without attribution (like Source Serif 4, the font used for the main text on this page); for details, see the Google Fonts FAQ page.

It also includes fonts acquired from Adobe, some of which are free (including the same Source Serif 4 family) and others of which require a Creative Cloud subscription or other type of purchase (see this page on font licensing from Adobe; there are some restrictions, but none of these involve giving credit to Adobe).

Not that you can’t give credit. Printed books often acknowledge fonts and their designers in a colophon, a brief statement (usually at the end) about details related to the book’s production. The one in CMOS can be found at the end of the printed book (and on the page that follows the entries for the letter z in the index at CMOS Online).

__________

* Traditionally speaking, a name like Garamond or Times refers to a typeface, whereas font refers to an assortment of characters for one of these typefaces in a specific size and style (e.g., italic). These days, the shorter word (font) is commonly used for both typeface and font.

Q. The hyphenation guide at CMOS 7.96 (in sec. 2, under “adjective + noun”) lists “a top-ten school” as containing a compound modifier that needs a hyphen. But would “top ten” always be considered a compound modifier when it appears in front of a noun? For example, in the case of “the top ten schools on the list” (or any construction of “the top ten schools”), would you still recommend hyphenating?

A. That’s a very good question! A top-ten school means a school that is among the top ten schools on a ranked list. In the first expression, top-ten is a compound modifier and is therefore hyphenated; in the second, the phrase top ten simply means first ten, so no hyphen is needed.

Only rarely would the phrase the top ten schools need a hyphen, as when top-ten is being used as a category—a scenario that would be more likely with singular school: Harvard, the top-ten school most commonly selected by students planning to major in political science, is in Cambridge.

Q. I know that there’s a rule that says if two adjectives can be joined by the word and without affecting the meaning, then you should separate the two adjectives with a comma. But sometimes a hyphen seems like the better choice. For example: “a historical-philosophical context” or “military-political involvement.” Do you agree?

A. The hyphens in historical-philosophical and military-political imply a mix of factors that’s more complex than what and would suggest—more of an intersection than a pair of attributes. If that’s what you intend, keep the hyphens rather than replacing them with commas.

These adjectives are equivalent to a term like socioeconomic, in which the word social in social-economic has become the combining form socio- and joins with economic to become one word (some of these terms retain their hyphens; see CMOS 7.96, sec. 2, under “combining forms”).

In fact, the similar term historicophilosophical is entered in Wiktionary and makes an appearance as an example under historico- in Merriam-Webster, so you could consider using that form instead of historical-philosophical (though you could retain the hyphen in this unwieldy compound for the sake of legibility: historico-philosophical).

There’s no established combining form for military, but military-political works well. Or you could try politico-military, as entered in Wiktionary.

Q. If you paraphrase or summarize and it is not a direct quote, do you include the page number in the citation?

A. Yes. In fact, it can be more important to cite page numbers when you paraphrase or summarize than when you quote, especially if the source of the info is longer than a few pages. Words reproduced in a verbatim quotation will almost always be easier to locate in the original than words and ideas approximated by paraphrase or summary.

Q. Hello, I’ve hunted around for an answer to this question and haven’t quite found it. I often cite multiple editions of the same book in my work. My understanding is that footnotes for repeated citations don’t typically list the year, but this would seem to leave ambiguous which edition of the text I’m citing. How should I resolve this to ensure my footnotes are clear? Thanks!

A. If a shortened citation is ambiguous, then don’t hesitate to add info that would make it unambiguous. Assuming the title remains the same for each edition of the book you’re citing, all citations after the first can be in shortened form. For example, if you were citing multiple editions of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, you might have the following footnotes:

1. Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (Brooklyn, 1855). Except as noted otherwise, this and other editions of Leaves of Grass cited herein are from The Walt Whitman Archive, ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, and Kenneth M. Price, https://whitmanarchive.org/.

2. Leaves of Grass, 1856 ed.

3. Leaves of Grass, 1881–82 ed.

4. Leaves of Grass, 1855 ed.

A shortened note for a book with numbered editions could include the edition number alone or the edition number plus year of publication (after the title or other shortened form): “3rd ed. (1987).”

For the use of italics for the title of The Walt Whitman Archive—which we’re treating as a collected work rather than as a website, though it’s both—see CMOS 14.103. For more on shortened citations, see 13.32–39 and especially 13.37, which includes an example of a title-only citation like the ones in notes 2–4 above.