Q. A question arose in my proofreading class about the phrase “rock and roll.” Merriam-Webster suggests that when it is used as a noun, no hyphens are required, and when used as an adjective, hyphens are preferred. Our question was whether we should choose one or the other and stick with it through the entire document or alternate between hyphenating and not hyphenating depending upon usage.
Q. Stylebooks insist on the use of a second comma in place-names that include city and state (he came from Smith’s Falls, Virginia, to drive the car), but it seems to me that the internal comma serves to separate the town name from the state name, and not to set off a nonrestrictive phrase, so it need not be followed by the second comma. Does this make sense?
Q. I’m editing a report about the EPA’s “Climate Ready Estuaries” program. Unfortunately, the program’s formal name has no hyphen, but there are several instances of “climate ready” as a phrasal adjective throughout the paper. I obviously can’t insert a hyphen into the program name, and I’m naturally averse to leaving “climate ready” unhyphenated. But this creates at least the appearance of inconsistency. What’s a diligent hyphenator to do?
Q. I have a question about physical quantities in a sentence: “Berry (1979) did more tests on the 2-gram tablets.” Is the hyphen correct?
Q. If you have to call someone “Jeff-bear,” is the hyphen appropriate, or would “Jeffbear” suffice? The new Manual doesn’t say.
Q. There is one type of compound adjective that has been causing me grief, and I was hoping you might be able to clarify it for me: “high–molecular weight hydrocarbon” or “high-molecular-weight hydrocarbon” or “high molecular weight hydrocarbon”? The sentence, for context: Following flocculation using a high-molecular-weight, medium-charge density polyacrylamide flocculent at optimal dosage, the filterability of flocculated sediments from tailings containing an intermediate fines content of solids from 10 to 20 wt. % was improved drastically. Thank you kindly!
Q. Hi, CMOS: I work in India, and we’ve been going back and forth over whether or not to hyphenate “ebook” for the US version of some marketing material. The British version does not hyphenate it, but Merriam-Webster does. Wired magazine, interestingly, has it both ways, and the CNET website hyphenates. Do you have a recommendation as to how to make an editorial decision when there is no fixed house style and when there’s really no clear consensus on how to proceed?
Q. MS Word changes two hyphens to the solid-line em dash. What do editors and copyeditors prefer? Thanks.
Q. I realize that the rules regarding hyphenation are fluid, but I was wondering if you could clarify an issue that has been bothering me. Is there a good way to know when to hyphenate two words serving as an adjective, especially when ambiguity could be an issue? For example, would the phrase “foreign language skills” be hyphenated? What about “large book sale”? Could this second phrase be interpreted as “a sale of large books” instead of “a large sale of books”?
Q. There has been an increase in the use of green to mean “ecofriendly.” Should we place green in quotation marks when used in this manner? Does it depend on the sentence?