5 Cases of Too Few or Too Many Hyphens
Posted: August 28, 2012
© p_gangler - Fotolia.com[/caption]How do you know when to and when to not use hyphens? These tips can help you out!
© p_gangler - Fotolia.com[/caption]How do you know when to and when to not use hyphens? These tips can help you out!
When it comes to hyphenation, prose often suffers from the Goldilocks effect: either too much or too little, but seldom just right. Here are some erroneously constructed elements along with repaired revisions that let them eat, sit, or sleep with contentment.
1. “Scientists have found that a second, as-yet smaller wave of mussel extinctions followed in the late twentieth century.”
The key point is not a smaller wave that is as yet — that makes no sense. The reference is to a wave that is as yet, or up to now, smaller; it’s an as-yet-smaller wave: “Scientists have found that a second, as-yet-smaller wave of mussel extinctions followed in the late twentieth century.”
2. “They criticized the arbitrary measures taken so far on the air-travel security front.”
The front in question is not a security front pertaining to air travel; it is a front pertaining to air-travel security. For that reason, security should be linked to “air travel” to modify front as one unit: “They criticized the arbitrary measures taken so far on the air-travel-security front.” (The progression is “air travel” to “air-travel security” to “ air-travel-security front.”)
In order to avoid an adjective stack, a writer could, with slightly more formality, conversely relax the sentence to read, “They criticized the arbitrary measures taken so far in the area of air-travel security” (or “. . . in the area of security during air travel”).
Read entire article 5 Cases of Too Few or Too Many Hyphens
Biz Tip from DailyWritingTips