How major style guides rule on "anymore"
American style closes 'anymore' as an adverb of time; British English often keeps 'any more' open.
The disagreement on "anymore" is an example of closed adverb vs open determiner phrase, the category of style-guide differences that most often confuses copy editors and creates inconsistency across long documents. Below is a guide-by-guide breakdown, drawn directly from the published editions cited.
| Style guide | Preferred form |
|---|---|
| AP Stylebook (2024–2025 Edition) | anymore |
| Chicago Manual of Style | anymore (adv.) / any more (det.) |
| MLA Handbook | anymore |
| APA Publication Manual | anymore |
| Merriam-Webster Dictionary | anymore |
What the divergence actually means
Unlike many compound-modernization decisions where style guides eventually converge, "anymore" continues to show genuine divergence between major guides. The AP Stylebook treats this as a settled call; Chicago Manual leaves more flexibility; and Merriam-Webster, as a descriptive dictionary, records both forms. Source: Chicago Manual of Style, 17th Edition
The APA Publication Manual aligns with AP and Chicago on "anymore", though APA generally addresses spelling questions only when they intersect with statistical reporting or technical psychology vocabulary. Where the manual is silent, APA defers to Merriam-Webster as its standard reference. Source: APA Publication Manual, 7th Edition
Merriam-Webster lists "anymore", which serves as the lexicographic baseline for U.S. style decisions. Because Merriam-Webster's entries reflect aggregated published usage rather than editorial preference, when a guide says "follow Merriam-Webster", as APA does, that effectively delegates the call to whichever spelling has dominated the published corpus. Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Garner's Modern English Usage classifies the "anymore" / "any more" pair on its Language-Change Index, a five-stage scale measuring whether a once-disputed form has been accepted into Standard English. For closed adverb vs open determiner phrase, Garner's typically rates the dominant form at Stage 4 ("ubiquitous but objected to by traditionalists") or Stage 5 ("fully accepted"). Source: Garner's Modern English Usage, 5th Edition
Practical guidance for editors
For working writers, the practical rule is straightforward: in journalism, follow AP; in academic writing in the humanities, follow MLA or Chicago; in social-science publishing, follow APA; in book publishing, follow Chicago. When no house style applies, Merriam-Webster's main entry is the safest default. The differences across these guides on "anymore" reflect not disagreement about correctness but different audiences and editorial pressures.
Editorial context
Copy editors most often mangle the "anymore" / "any more" distinction by defaulting to the closed adverbial form in quantitative contexts, where the open spelling is obligatory even in American English. A concrete example of this persistent error appears in Do you require anymore information?, which should read any more information to correctly convey an additional amount rather than temporal concession. This blunder stems from phonetic similarity, both pronounced /ɛni mɔr/, and the influence of ubiquitous adverbial examples like They don't make cars like that anymore, coupled with autocorrect complacency. The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) reveals "any more" comprising over 95% of quantitative hits since 1990, underscoring the register split: closed for the adverb of time or negation (per historical compounding akin to "nowadays"), open for determiner/pronoun uses. Editorial reasoning emphasizes semantic precision over one-size-fits-all closure, a nuance overlooked in rushed proofreading.
Cross-references
For the dictionary entry, frequency data, and pronunciation of anymore, see the main word page. For other style-guide spelling decisions in this category, browse all style-guide spelling rulings.