Hyphenated phrases

Um... suds-sleeked?



Might you have meant "suds-slicked" instead?

Also, and bear in mind I'm not a professional grammarian, but you seem to have a bad case of hyphenitis (the overuse of hyphenated phrases where single words and/or other non-hyphenated work just as well).

Ok, so I made that up. There is no hyphenitis. But there ought to be. Other than your last two, none of your above examples need to be hyphenated. "Off the rack" is a phrase, as is "out of the box." I have no idea where the hyphens came from in "little to no time," which is what really lead to your diagnosis.

The disco one is nebulous, but my gut says "no."

But your last two can be hyphenated, though as I mentioned in your question about the sheepdogs, I think you're better off with a solution that works around it, especially for bullheaded. Which I don't think requires a hyphen at all.

Suds-slicked, however, would need one. And it's a nice image.

AP style guide has a lot less hypenated words. The newsies tend to smush their words together for headlines. I really would leave hyphens out unless you are using a fuddy duddy Government style guide which includes all that come-as-you-are junkola.

Some hyphenated phrases are commonly used and can't easily be avoided, e.g. on-the-nose dialogue.

Others provide clarity, e.g. walking-stick (if the hyphen isn't there I get a mental flash of a cartoon stick with legs out for a stroll, a walking stick).

Otherwise, I think of ways to recast the sentence to avoid 'em as much as possible, e.g. The suds parted to reveal her gleaming, shapely thigh.

But that's just me.

-Derek

I think the only one that's wrong is the little to no time example. The issue I had with the clothes one is that clothes is plural. Her clothes were...

Her clothes [sic] was off-the-rack, out-of-the-box new.

OK. These are simple phrasal adjectives acting as modifiers of the predicate adjective.

They are hyphenated here if they are so familiar and idiomatic that they are always hyphenated.
There will be style lists for this. They seem pretty common and idiomatic to me, so go ahead.

If they were not familiar, common and idiomatic phrasal adjectives, they would be hyphenated before a noun, but not otherwise.





He had little-to-no time to deal with it.

This is not a single phrasal adjective. The 'little-to-no' does not act as a single modifier to the noun 'time'.
What we have here instead are two adjectives. We can break it down to ...

He had little time.
He had no time.


Consider 'out-of-the-box' merchandise

It cannot be reduced to ...

He bought out of merchandise.
He bought box merchandise.



Listening to a no-worry-in-the-world disco song, ...

I'd call this an idiosyncratic coinage and let it pass here as a phrasal adjective.
In other usage, I'd let it pass as a phrasal noun.

He had a delicious feeling of no-worry-in-the-world.


He bull-headedly walked on.

Again, this would be a stylistic decision.
If you'd use ...

He is bull-headed.

Then you use ...

He bull-headedly walked on.




Her suds-sleeked thigh...

The grammar is fairly straightforward.

It's a couple of adjectives preceding the noun. 'Suds' modifies 'sleeked' rather than thigh. So the two are hyphened.

The lemon-yellow moon rode high in the sky.

works the same way.


If the adjective came after the noun, it would read ...

Her thigh was suds sleeked.
The moon was lemon yellow.

You use hyphen to make a phrase into an adjective or adverb. Otherwise, you leave it alone.

dianeP said:

Her clothes was off-the-rack, out-of-the-box new.

Click to expand...

off-the-rack and out-of-the-box both modify "new" so they're good.

He had little-to-no time to deal with it.

Click to expand...

Little to no time is not an adjective. Leave the hyphens out.

Listening to a no-worry-in-the-world disco song, ...

Click to expand...

That's an adjective (to describe the disco song). Hyphenate.

He bullheadedly walked on.

Click to expand...

Bullheadedly is one word. No hyphen.

Her suds-sleeked thigh...

Click to expand...

Hyphenate. But "suds-sleeked" sounds really clunky.


By the way, too many hyphenated phrases really clog up your prose, IMHO.

You're creating compound adjectives and adverbs in some of your examples, not in others. A compound adjective is formed when two (or more) words are used together to describe or modify a noun.

A temporary compound adjective is formed when the two words together assume a different meaning than their separate meanings. Writers who form temporary compounds should generally hyphenate them when they are used as adjectives and appear before the noun. If the compound adjective appears after the noun, hyphenate only if it’s needed for clarity.

Examples of compound adjectives (all hyphenated because they are both temporary and come before the noun): hard-nosed boss, ill-fated voyage, mass-produced shoes, wacked-out psycho, thrown-together salad, up-to-the-minute news--and a no-worry-in-the-world disco song, her suds-sleeked thigh. (Out-of-the-box new would be a compound adverb.)

Have you created a compound, or just put two descriptive words together? To check, see if you can remove either word without making nonsense or changing the meaning of the remaining word. A tall frosty glass of beer still makes sense if either ‘tall’ or ‘frosty’ is removed, while blue-ribbon pie requires both ‘blue’ and ‘ribbon’ and should therefore be hyphenated before the word ‘pie.’

Maryn, who copied and pasted this from something she posted where her kids would see it