Q. Is s’s’ the correct plural possessive form of s? It’d be used to show that a group of s’s owns something/multiple things. If not, could you explain why it wouldn’t work (same with if it does work)?

A. Well, yes, your example is technically correct (we applied italics to three instances of the letter s in your question). The plural of the letter s is formed with an apostrophe for the sake of clarity: s’s. The possessive form of a plural that ends in s takes an apostrophe alone: s’s’.

But for the sake of your readers, not all of whom will enjoy deciphering a four-character term that relies on a mix of italics and regular text plus two different kinds of apostrophes—the first of which, for the plural s’s, can also mark the singular possessive (which is identical: s’s)—consider spelling out the letter s, as in an ess’s curves (singular possessive) or a group of esses’ curves (plural possessive).

See also CMOS 7.15 (on the plurals of letters), 7.16 (on possessives), 7.67 (on letters as letters), 7.70 (on letters as shapes), and 7.71 (on the names of letters); for periods and commas next to apostrophes, see 6.126.

Q. Is there such a thing as a suspended en dash? What would you do in the case of “α and β particle–emitting isotopes,” for example? Does anything go after the alpha symbol, or should it have nothing, even though “particle” applies to that term?

A. There is such a thing as a suspended en dash, but it should be used only to omit a word or phrase that follows the first dash in the full phrase (i.e., before suspension):

pre–Civil War and post–Civil War [two en dashes]

becomes

pre– and post–Civil War [with a suspended en dash]

In your case, here’s what we’d do:

α particle–emitting and β particle–emitting isotopes [two en dashes]

becomes

α particle– and β particle–emitting isotopes [suspended en dash]

but not

α– and β particle–emitting isotopes [suspended en dash]

and not

α- and β-particle-emitting isotopes [suspended hyphen]

That second-to-last example (α– and β particle–emitting isotopes) asks readers to mentally supply the word particle between the alpha symbol and the en dash, which is too much to expect. And in both that example and the last one, the alpha may be misread as alpha minus.

All this assumes you’re referring to two sets of isotopes, those that emit alpha particles and those that emit beta particles. If that’s not the case—or if it is, but the text doesn’t make that clear—consider rewording (e.g., “isotopes that emit both α and β particles” or “isotopes that emit either α or β particles”).

For more on en dashes in compound adjectives, see CMOS 6.86.

Q. Does CMOS have a preference on the use of “America” as the country’s name versus the United States or US in formal writing? I know there is a distinction made for the abbreviation versus the spelled-out term, but I am curious if there is a preference on using “America” alone as the noun form of the country, not in reference to the people.

A. Though “America” is often used as shorthand for “the United States of America”—especially in speech—it’s usually better in formal writing to be more specific and use the first part of the name instead: “the United States” (or, to save space or avoid repetition, “the US”).

The adjective “American,” by contrast, is usually acceptable when referring to the United States (as in the phrase “American interests”), provided its meaning is clear from context. If “United-Statesian” weren’t so awkward (the link is to the entry in Merriam-Webster, which spells the adjective with a hyphen), then “American” might be less common than it is. If in doubt, use the adjective “US,” which is acceptable in even the most formal prose.

See also CMOS 10.37 (for “US” versus “United States”) and Garner’s Modern English Usage, 5th ed. (Oxford, 2022), under “American.”

Q. If you’re following Chicago’s rules for title case (at CMOS 8.160), do you capitalize short prepositions that aren’t immediately followed by their objects? A few examples that have come up in my work recently (anonymized a bit and left lowercase for you to resolve) are “paid for by grandma,” “what will grandma dress up like?,” and “whom has grandma turned to for advice?”

A. In your examples, up looks more like an adverb—one that modifies the verb dress—than like a preposition. So let’s call it an adverb.*

But for, by, and to are more clearly prepositions (as is like, though as the last word in a title it would always be capped). So:

Paid for by Grandma
What Will Grandma Dress Up Like?
Whom Has Grandma Turned to for Advice?

It doesn’t matter that the object of for in the first example is unstated or that the object of to in the third example comes first. A preposition is a preposition (except when it’s not).

__________

* The entry in the OED for “up (adv. 1),” sense II.18.c, cross-references several verbs that form phrasal verbs with up, including dress.

Q. Good morning! Are syndicated newspaper articles marked as such in footnotes? It seems somewhat misleading to refer simply to an article in, say, The Indianapolis Star, when it was published in papers around the country and I just happened to see it in the Star because that’s the database to which I have access. I have periodically searched for the answer to this question in the Q&A and haven’t seen one. Please let me know your thoughts, thanks!

A. Though Chicago doesn’t currently require you to include information about syndication, you can always provide additional context for a cited source beyond the bare citation. If the article that you’re citing has been distributed via syndication to other publications—and you think readers should know this—then feel free to say so, either in your text (where you could simply refer to “the syndicated article” when you introduce it) or as commentary following your citation in a note (as in CMOS 13.40).

If you do mention syndication, consider citing an additional source that would confirm this, unless that information appears with the article (in which case your Star citation will do double duty).

Q. Hello, I’m struggling with source links. Chicago allows stable links from databases like JSTOR, but on the other hand it sometimes recommends listing JSTOR instead of a link. It also allows Google Books and Archive.org links. But are all these links only recommended if they offer a full view of the source? And what about links to a book landing page from the publisher, such as Routledge or Chicago? Are those useful? Finally, if a link does not match the edition or format of the source cited, can it still be used? I typically delete links that don’t pass this test because I worry about copyright issues and inaccuracy. Am I being too strict? Thank you so much for your help!

A. Some answers, assuming you’re talking about source citations:

1. Though we would allow listing “JSTOR” in place of a URL, it’s not a recommendation. The “stable” URLs offered for articles at JSTOR tend to be relatively short and easy to decipher (“https://www.jstor.org/stable/” plus a number), so there’s usually no reason not to include them in your citations. See CMOS 13.8, 13.9, and 13.10.
2. You could cite a copyright-restricted book or other source that you consulted in a limited preview at Google Books or Archive.org. But it would be better to find a complete copy of the source elsewhere (in whatever format) and cite that instead; you may have missed something in your review of the partial source.
3. A URL for a publisher’s book page isn’t normally all that useful in a citation; those pages are essentially advertisements for the book and places to buy it. Likewise, there’s no need to include a link to the Amazon page for a book purchased there or to list a URL that points to a book’s entry in an online library catalog.
4. Including a URL that doesn’t lead to the edition or format of the cited source isn’t normally necessary. But you can include such a URL if you think it will help readers who might otherwise not find the source; in that case, preface it with “also available at” or the like. See also CMOS 13.14.
5. Though you shouldn’t publish a URL that provides unauthorized access to a work under copyright, the scenarios you’ve mentioned all seem to involve citing legitimate copies (or partial copies) of a work. If you’re concerned, consider getting legal advice.

A URL is a convenience intended to lead readers directly to a source that you’ve consulted and that’s otherwise been cited in full (such that a URL wouldn’t be needed to locate it). URLs that don’t lead to the full source, or that aren’t reasonably short, can usually be omitted.

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.

See also CMOS 7.96, section 3, under “fold.”

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.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/12/29/willie-nelson-profile.

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.