Commas, like the two in this sentence, often come in pairs. When they do, they’re usually acting like miniature parentheses. In fact, whenever you’re tempted to omit the second of two commas, convert them both to parentheses; if your text still works as intended, keep that second comma.
The convention of hyphenating a compound modifier before a noun but not after—as in a well-known author versus an author who is well known—has been Chicago style since the first edition (published in 1906).
Most readers know that hyphens connect groups of words or numbers whereas dashes set things off. But from there it tends to get a little fuzzy. For example, which key do you press to get the dash? Is there more than one kind of dash? . . . What about minus signs?
One of the main reasons to insert a hyphen between two words that aren’t normally hyphenated is to help readers sort out the text when those words are used as a compound modifier before a noun.
Chicago-style source citations are designed to be both concise and informative. Ideally, readers should be able to tell what a citation refers to despite its abbreviated nature.
A kinship name is a name for a family member, whether close or distant. Such names include mom, dad, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, cousin, and so on.
Latin may be a dead language, but many of its words and phrases flourish in modern English. The most common Latin borrowing might be an abbreviation: the all-purpose etc., short for et cetera, “and others of the same kind.”
Coordinating conjunctions join pairs of words, phrases, or clauses, but when such a conjunction is interrupted by an intervening phrase or clause, it can be difficult to know where to put the commas. This is especially true when the conjunction joins the parts of a compound sentence.
If you’ve ever had to learn how to use commas with relative clauses—especially clauses introduced by which or that—you may have encountered the word restrictive and its opposite, nonrestrictive. What do those two words mean, and what do they have to do with commas?
When you read a book that includes source citations, do you prefer footnotes or endnotes? Publishers usually assume that the average reader will prefer endnotes, on the principle that they’re less distracting than footnotes.
