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Ask for help > hyphen in compound adjectives
hyphen in compound adjectives
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temainzer
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hyphen in compound adjectives
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Hi everyone!
Does anyone know how to use the hyphen in compund adjectives? I know that compunds formed by adverb + present participle take hyphen such as fast-looking. Compunds formed by an adverb ending in"ly" + past participle are separate, eg. widely respected. But what about gray-haired and kindhearted? Both are formed by adjective+noun+ed and I always see them with or without hyphen. I can not work out or find a rule. Can anyone help me?
Thanks in advance,
Teresa
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30 Mar 2009
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alien boy
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Hi temainzer!
hyphen use is very arbitrary in contemporary English. I �ve taken the following information about hyphens directly from Swan �s �Practical English Usage � for you.
When are hyphens used?
b) compound adjectives
red-hot; nice-looking; blue-eyed; grey-green; broken- hearted
When we use a longer phrase as an adjective before a noun, we often use hyphens. Compare:
- an out-of-work miner. He �s out of work.
the London-Paris flight; the Scotland-France match
- a shoot-to-kill policy. They were ordered to shoot to kill.
Are hyphens disappearing?
The rules about hyphens are complicated, and usage is not very clear. Perhaps because of this, people seem to be using hyphens less, especially in compound nouns. Many common short compounds are now often written �solid �, with no division between the words (e.g. weekend, wideawake, takeover); other less common or longer compounds are now more likely to be written as completely separate words (e.g. train driver, living room). The situation at present is rather confused, and it is not unusual to find the same expression
spelt in three different ways (e.g. bookshop, book-shop, book shop). If one is not sure whether to use a hyphen between words or not, the best thing is to look in a dictionary, or to write the words without a hyphen.
Hope that helps a little!
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30 Mar 2009
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temainzer
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super thanks, alien boy, it helped a lot. I �ll stop worrying about hyphens from now on and use my intuition more! (LOL)
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30 Mar 2009
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