Can we forgo the ugly suspended hyphens in these? It looks so much cleaner and clearer to a reader than to have those dangling hyphens. Would you support it in professional writing? (I hope so!)
The movie appealed to five, six, and seven-year-olds. (Rather than: The movie appealed to five-, six-, and seven-year-olds.)
first, second, and third-grade activities
(Rather than: first-, second-, and third-grade activities)
two and four-wheel drive
(Rather than: two- and four-wheel drive)
fifteen and thirty-year mortgages
(Rather than: fifteen- and thirty-year mortgages)
pre and post-war
(Rather than: pre- and post war)
a one to two-week vacation
(Rather than: a one- to two-week vacation)
three, six, and nine-month updates
(Rather than: three-, six-, and nine-month updates)
open and closed-door policies
(Rather than: open- and closed-door policies)
long and short-term loans
(Rather than: long- and short-term loans)
But: “a ten percent-off coupon”
(The reader needs the single hyphen, I think, to fully grasp that the coupon is entitling the customer to ten percent savings off [deducted from] the original price
Thank you.
i'd prefer it if we did something like...
pre- and post-war
makes it clearer.
always hated when multiple words get involved...
ten percent-off coupon? the percent and off are put together, ten is hanging out by itself, not as clear. hyphenate it all, i say.
I agree with Thuggish that your main concern should be clarity of your meaning.
Strunk and White are silent in this particular case. The Chicago Manual gives the usage you don't prefer, grammargeek, as the correct one, but both of these have been around since Jesus was a boy. Words into Type is newer, somewhat, and it agrees with you, emphasizing the clarity thing.
Yeah, I know, justwords, but it's unsightly, clunky, horrendous, and deplorable, in my eyes, anyway.
Chicago does an about-face on certain rules with each new edition, every ten years or so. Maybe they'll change this eventually.
They do go with the flow. Hey, you want to see slow to change? See Catholic church. Or Putin, who thinks it's 1955. :)
"... open and closed-door policies" doesn't mean the same thing as "... open- and closed-door policies." It means, "policies which are both 'open' and 'closed-door,'" which is oxymoronic. One might hope that a gracious reader would rule out the self-contradictory interpretation; but why not just write it "correctly"?
Yeah, true enough. Thanks.
