But now, in Chicago style, these adverbs “generally need not be preceded by a comma.”Ĭhicago’s examples look strange to me: “I had my cake and ate it too.” “Anders likes Beethoven his sister does too.” But no one asked my opinion, so I guess I’ll just try to keep up with the ever-changing rules. When I was young, someone must have told me explicitly that “too” and “either” are always set off with commas.įor years, I thought this was a firm rule. No comma necessary before “too” or “either.” This new rule in the Chicago Manual weirds me out. So, as Chicago notes, there’s no reason “etc.” should be different. of previous editions.” If you swapped out the “etc.” for specific nouns like “buildings and parks,” you wouldn’t follow that with a comma. This small departure from the recommendation in previous editions treats such terms as equivalent to the final element in a series.”Ĭonsider the example: “The map was incomplete, lacking many of the streets, alleys, etc. “They are followed by a comma only if required by the surrounding text. “The abbreviation ‘etc.’ … and such equivalents as ‘and so forth’ and ‘and the like’ are preceded by a comma,” the editors wrote in the latest edition. The abbreviation “etc.” used to be set off with two commas - one before and one after. No comma after “etc.” Another change from the most recent edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. The Chicago Manual, on the other hand, has just leaned hard in the opposite direction by specifically calling for a hyphen in “decision-making.” That dictionary has no entry for the hyphenated term “decision-maker,” meaning you can either leave it unhyphenated or follow AP’s general guidance that says to use hyphens when you think they help. AP has a whole entry for “maker,” which says to check Webster’s New World College Dictionary for the specific term. It’s always been difficult to know whether terms with “maker” and “making” should be hyphenated. Hyphen in “decision-making” in Chicago style. It’s now “passerby” in both AP and Chicago styles, with the now-even-weirder plural: passersby. But AP just joined many others by dropping the hyphen. No hyphen in “passerby.” There’s no getting around it: passer-by has always been a weird word with the very weird quality of forming its plural with an internal s: passers-by.įor years now, different styles and dictionaries have disagreed on whether the hyphen is necessary. “We removed the hyphen in double-e combinations,” the editors stated in the 2019 edition. This came up most with the prefixes “pre” and “re”: pre-election, re-energize, and the like. The rules vary from prefix to prefix and even from situation to situation for the same prefix.Ĭase in point: For years, the Associated Press Stylebook advised followers: “except for ‘cooperate’ and ‘coordinate,’ use a hyphen if a prefix ends in a vowel and the word that follows begins with the same vowel.” For compound adjectives you make up yourself, like a “hyphen-obsessed editor,” the longstanding rule has been to add your own hyphen if it helps.īut for prefixes - well, heaven help you. For nouns, like “passer-by” and verbs like “mass-produce,” you can just go with whatever your dictionary says.

Hyphenation rules break down into different categories. Hyphen not needed for “pre” or “re” before an e.

Here are some of the new punctuation rules influencing what you read and, if you like, what you write too. That’s because changes to the country’s two most influential style books lean lighter on those punctuation marks, but only in certain, very specific circumstances. You may not have noticed, but your world just got less hyphenated.

Decision making spelling