[Forum] RE: documenting a person's lifespan

Hello, Some style guides specify life dates should always be in full; others, like Chicago, appear to have no specific rule. If the death date cannot be abbreviated, what is the reason? Is it only how it looks? Especially in a publication that otherwise writes year spans in the format 192

[Forum] RE: Hyphenating numbers as compound phrases

30-60 year-old migrants makes me picture 30-60 one-year-old children. How about "30- to 60-year-old migrants"? See CMOS 7.85 first section (age terms). Or do you mean that you have a group of 60-year-old migrants, and there are 30 people in the group? Then you could say thirty 60-year

[Forum] RE: Percent

That's interesting, Crosstees. It never occurred to me that "a" would be considered a preposition. Though, I still would say that it is informal for "per" which should be used in more technical or formal writing. Anyway, it's a weird sentence. "5% per year increase by the end of the year." It

[Forum] Increase/decrease vs. increase by/decrease by

I'm haunting the web (including CMOS) searching for an answer and finding different opinions on whether one way or the other is correct (i.e., when it's not CLEARLY one way or the other): Example: We are analyzing four years of revenue. The final column shows the overall change from the beginning

[Forum] RE: okay in dialogue

My preference is for option two. I like the idea of one letter, instead of abbreviating a two-letter acronym with a three-letter word. I'd use the apostrophe because I see it as a standard abbreviation, not a social media acronym. It's true that stand-alone letters are becoming popular (BRB, LOL,

[Forum] Rationale as to why

Chicago replied to me and said they would punctuate the following with hyphens throughout each phrase as shown below: [I]a $60,000-to-$70,000-per-year income a $65-million-to-$75-million-a-year business empire a 20-to-30-percent-a-year increase[/I] Yet their examples of like phrases uses

[Forum] Comma required after a state when used as an abbreviated postal code?

Comma required after a state when used as an abbreviated postal code? Please see below. The Dallas, TX, rock band... The Frankfort, KY, native... Thanks

[Forum] Repetition of Year

Hi, everyone. I am new here and this is the first time I post here. I would love some advice on the following issue. Basically, if within one paragraph, the same year but with different months occurs more than once, can I omit the year after I've mentioned it once and just stick to the mo

[Forum] RE: Chicago’s new hyphenation guidance

Thanks, Pixna. Following your suggestion with the en dash, I think we could safely apply that logic to the remainder of the examples: a 35–40 percent a year increase a 35%–40% a year increase (if symbols were used) a 40 percent a year increase a $60–$70 million a year commitment But: a $

[Forum] RE: Using plus with hyphens

I went on Google Books to see how others have done it, and it's all different ways twenty plus year old twenty-plus year-old twenty-plus-year-old twenty-plus year old The rule might very well go with #3. But I prefer #2, because it groups twenty-plus and year-ol