Another area that I see as being totally abused is in the area of hyphenating words. I'll go over this in a series of posts, but first has to do with hyphenated adjectives. For example:
New York-based company
Red-colored car
Heaven-sent gift
Slow-burning fire
30-page letter.
These all need to be hyphenated because the two adjective words, not separated, would make the sentence unclear. How would these phrases sound and what would they mean if they were not hyphenated?
New York based company
Red colored car
Heaven sent gift
Slow burning fire
30 page letter.
While many readers might understand what's being described, it can be unclear to some readers, and when embedded in the rest of the sentence and paragraph, context issues could make the phrase very unclear. "Heaven sent gift" could be thought of as a misspelled sentence - missing an "a" before "gift," making it "Heaven sent a gift."
A "slow burning fire" could imply that the fire is migrating somewhere, slowly, whereas a slow-burning fire clearly means a fire that is in one place, and is slowly burning.
We'll discuss more examples of hyphenated adjectives, and also discuss hyphenated verbs, hyphenated nouns, and other situations when hyphens should and should not be used.
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