From the Bad Advice Files

Someone sent me a link to a blog post about hyphenated compound adjectives in which the rules were completely mangled because the author didn't distinguish between adjectives and adverbs. (I'm not going to link to that original post because my purpose is not to embarrass or harass that author, but to state the correct rule.) This is one of those things that causes a crapton of confusion, so I thought it would make sense to review the rule. (Related posts: how to identify compound adjectives, squinting modifiers)

First, you have to know the difference between an adjective and an adverb.

Adjectives modify nouns in a way that describes an attribute of the noun.

Adverbs modify adjectives, verbs, or other adverbs in a way that describes a relation or degree of time, degree, manner, and similar qualities.

So:

inflated balloon
(inflated is an attribute of the noun balloon, so inflated is an adjective -- technically, a past participle functioning as an adjective)

partially inflated balloon
(partially is a degree of inflated, so partially is an adverb modifying an adjective)

If you were to hyphenate that,
partially-inflated balloon,
you would be wrong.

This is considered an "exception" to the rule regarding hyphenation of compound adjectives, but that's something of a misnomer. This could never be a compound adjective because it's half-adjective, half-adverb. A similar "exception" involves whether to hyphenate a preposition used as an adverb, such as:

Please check out at the check-out counter.

The first "out" is an adverb modifying the verb "check." The second "out" is part of a compound adjective modifying "counter."

One place where the rule is in flux regards the use of comparative or superlative compounds. The old rule is that you never hyphenate a comparative or superlative adverb modifying an adjective. This is probably easiest to see if we stick to good/well, better, best as our example because that will ignore the -ly comparatives and superlatives.

better built car
best dressed woman
well read man
a good, simple dinner (good is an adjective modifying a noun)
a well prepared dinner (well is an adverb modifying an adjective)
the best cooked dinner (best is a superlative modifying an adjectival past participle)

That's the old rule. Lately, we've seen people hyphenating these usages, but to my eye, it looks strange. Maybe this is because my eye knows the difference between adjectives and adverbs, and my eye knows that you don't hyphenate an adverb to an adjective, but whatever. Rules change.

What are compound adjectives? When two adjectives operate together as a unit to modify a noun. For example,

long-term solution

Solution is the noun. Long and term operate together to create a single unit of meaning. This isn't an arbitrary rule because it can have an impact on meaning. Compare:

The large appliance factory is closing.
The large-appliance factory is closing.

In the first, an appliance factory which is large is closing.
In the second, a factory which makes large appliances is closing.

Okay, so, that probably doesn't un-confuse anybody. As I said, this is not an easy concept to grasp, and even seasoned copy editors sometimes quibble over particulars, especially in the case of squinting modifiers (see link at the top of this post). But I thought it was worth at least trying to un-confuse things. :)

Theresa

Hyphen NOT example

Almost finished with the big article. In fact, I wrote the last line (replaying a motif that had been brought up elsewhere-- no limit, no net):

No limit, no fear, and no net fiction.

Hmm. I looked at that and knew that those "no" adjectives all needed hyphens ("What's net fiction? And why should we have none of it?"). But I didn't wanna! I just knew they'd visually detract from my point that this is fiction with anarchy. Hyphens sort of, you know, deny anarchy.

And if I hadn't just done that damned blog entry about compound adjectives, I might have just neglected to fix them. But I kept hearing, "Heal thyself, and all that."
But I still didn't want hyphens.

You know, the next time some writer tells me how "constricting" grammar is, I'm going to point to this. When I started looking at that line and trying to get around the whole hyphen thing, I realized that the terms that were most interesting, most exciting, most intense were buried as compound adjectives. Yeah, buried. Anything in the middle of a sentence is buried. It's the beginning of the paragraph (and this was at the end), and the end of the sentence where there's power. And I was wasting that powerful final real estate on an important but not very interesting word, fiction. So when I contemplated how yucky hyphens would be, I understood why they'd be yucky-- because they would call attention to the marginal position of what ought to be the big culminating terms.

Once I realized that, and realized that I wanted to END on one of the "no" terms (I'm still debating which one... probably "no limit" because it's the longest), I immediately came up with a STATEMENT, yes, a point, a sentence (with a colon, but this is academic writing-- I mean, colons and semicolons rule) which didn't just present my pretty terms, but put them in the context of the whole paper:

This is fiction at its most elemental: No fear, no net, no limit.

I'm still fiddling here, as "this is" is sort of lame, and I really prefer "story" to "fiction," as "fiction" implies prose and print, and I mean film and TV too. But that can wait (I'm presenting just a short version of this, not the long version, which isn't really done :). I have solved the hyphen issue by analyzing what I really want to mean.

Limitation is liberation, and that actually is sort of the message of my whole paper, though it has nothing to do with hyphens.

Alicia

Very small picture comment

Well, Theresa's doing all that great big-picture thinking again, and here I am, worrying about hyphens. :)

But boy, this got to me, especially since it came from a publisher:
The End to End eBook Solution

I puzzled over that. Made me think of "The war to end wars," and Churchill's "This might be the end of the beginning." But that's not what it means, surely, that this product, whatever it is, is the END of something, that something being, I guess, the "End eBook," or maybe "End eBook Solution". But that's what it's saying. The End. And what is it the end to? End eBook Solution. It's sort of scary, isn't it, that somewhere out there is an "End eBook," the last eBook, maybe? Sounds apocalytic, and adding "solution" only makes it more resonant with finality.

Oh. That's not what it means. That can't be what it means. So what does it mean?

Read over your sentences. Read like a reader would read. Is the reader likely to know what you mean without having to read over and over and discard possible meanings and then, reluctantly, deciding that some meaning is maybe more plausible, given the context and common sense? It's your job to make your meaning clear, not the reader's job to figure out what the hell you're talking about.

Anticipate problems as you write sentences. For example, "end" is especially complicated because it can be a verb or a noun... or an adjective. And "to" similarly can play different roles, as a preposition or as part of a verb-infinitive. So "end to end" meaning from one end to another uses "to" as a preposition (positioning the two ends), while "the war to end wars" uses "to" as the beginning of the infinitive "to end". So, really, you almost couldn't choose a phrase more calculated to confuse.

Fortunately, there's something called a "hyphen" to help.

What goes with what? Don't make the reader guess. This is why hyphens were invented, to indicate when something is a compound, to be read together, usually as a modifier. So probably the compound is "end-to-end"? Like the two cars parked end to end? I'm not sure what it means in this context, and why it's not "beginning to end," but I do know that with hyphens, we know that "end-to-end" is a compound modifier, and while we still don't know if it modifies "eBook" or "solution" or (most likely) "eBook solution," we are at least in the ballpark of meaning and we're not thinking grim thoughts about the end of days and final solutions.

So the rule is:

Compound modifiers before the noun modified are hyphenated. (What's a compound, of course, is up to some debate. Some writers hyphenate "dark blue" before "sea"-- "dark-blue sea," and that's maybe overkill. :) Whether the compound is hyphenated when it's NOT before a noun (like "the solution was end to end/end-to-end") is more a case-by-case (g) determination.

Bring back sentence diagramming, that's what I say. If the person who wrote that advertising tag had spent fourth grade diagramming sentences, well, this travesty would not have happened. And somewhere up in heaven, Sister Evarista is smiling. (I might be presuming too much with that "heaven" thing-- ouch! Okay, okay. Sister Evarista must be in heaven, because that's where the thunderbolts of rebuke are launched.)

Sentence diagramming site (the author apparently had his own Sr. Evarista)

Alicia