Thursday, April 20, 2017

punctuation - Is it okay to write "gale force" without the hyphen?



Northern New South Wales is bracing for more flooding today. Heavy rain and gale force winds are expected to hit the region later this morning. (ABC News)



ABC’s news script has no hyphen between gale and force. Is it okay or does it need to be changed?



Answer



According to most style guides, yes, you need hyphens in compound adjectives.


(Note that this only applies to adjectives that come before the word they modify: in she was old fashioned, it is not necessary, because it comes after; in an old-fashioned woman, it is.)


The general rule is to use hyphens only where they are necessary to prevent ambiguity or where they save readers the embarrassment of having to reread a passage. In practice, not all compound adjectives are problematic without hyphens; however, in this case uniformity trumps other concerns. If compound adjectives are always hyphenated, you have something to rely on as a reader. This is an advantage in itself. Secondly, it is easier for writers if they don't have to think about whether or not the compound is still readable without a hyphen.


I have more or less paraphrased Fowler's perspective here, as in Fowler's Modern English Usage; but I believe most style guides reason along similar lines.



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