Hyphen or not? I think so, but what do I know?

[Orrex]

"the red rimmed meat" or "the red-rimmed meat"

"the pepper encrusted mass" or "the pepper-encrusted mass"


I'm asking for a reason, I promise!

[Bucky]

1. I'm generally anti-hyphen (make that antihyphen). So many words formerly hyphened have lost it

Think about how awkward "to-morrow" looks when it was common usage just 100 years ago. I figure it's my duty as a progressive to help evolution along by losing as many hyphens as possible when I do the writing. I only use a hyphenation when I absolutely have to in order to retain the sense of a compounded phrase. Overhyphenating tends to look amateurish, like people who write poetry in all lower case letters or cross their sevens because they think it looks more European & thus more sophisticated.

I'd definitely go with "the pepper encrusted mass" sans hyphen. I'm on the fence as to whether "red-rimmed" means anything that "red rimmed" does not. But the more I think about it, the more the hyphen seems to add nothing to the phrase. I think you can dehyphenate (and not de-hyphenate) both phrases.

[Orrex]

3. see, here's my trouble

When I read "the red rimmed meat" I see it as "the rimmed meat that was red" rather than "the meat that was rimmed by red."

Similarly, "the pepper encrusted mass" comes across (to me) as "the pepper encrusted (the) mass" rather than "the mass that was encrusted with pepper."


I'm editing someone else's work and--believe me--it's not going to win the Pulitzer either way. Still, I'm trying to give the writing a boost when possible, and if I can minimize the awkward phrasings, so much the better. I'm normally not a hyphen zealot, but these two cases gave me pause.


Thanks for chiming in!

[Bucky]

5. Well, it's really an author's preference--nothing an editor should touch

That's an edit you can suggest to the author, but leave the decision to him. I think the red being on the rim is obvious, tho I'm not looking at the context. If the meat was just red, the author wouldn't have a reason for mentioning the rimming.

On the other hand, I don't think there's an actual difference between "the pepper encrusted mass" and "the mass that was encrusted with pepper." Red, rim, and meat are three distinct objects in the mind's eye. Pepper, encrustment, and mass only comprise two objects, however, as the word "mass" doesn't mean anything unless it's adjectived.

[Orrex]

7. I see your point, but I'm not willing to trust this author's preferences

I won't punish you with the entire story, of course, but I can say with some confidence that the author's preference is indistinguishable from the author's poor writing.

I regret that I wasn't involved in the accept/reject process; I only came on board after the decisions had been made.

[Duer 157099]

12. Hey, I cross my sevens out of habit, nothing more

It started when I had to be very careful and precise about how I wrote numbers and it is too easy to confuse a "1" and a "7" sometimes, so I had to start crossing my sevens. I don't think it's pretentious at all, it was necessary at the time, and now it's just a habit I cannot break.

Now that I think about it, the reasons the ones looked like sevens is because everyone except Americans put the little slanted tip on the top but without the horizontal line on the bottom, as with this typed 1. The slash on the seven is thus very critical, imho.

[rug]

2. I defer to hyphenate's opinion.

[UTUSN]

4. With the examples as premise, I go for the hyphen. The poster who

cited "to-morrow" as a negative is going for an archaic "reason".

[Bucky]

6. By the way, I feel the same way about the gratuitous use of quotation marks.

[UTUSN]

15. Bwah-HAH!1 I'll withhold an opinion on gratuitous quotation marks until I *see* examples SOMEwhere!1

[Kali]

8. I think yes on red-rimmed

no on pepper-encrusted

just a reader here

[Book Lover]

9. Because the two-word phrases are adjectival, connect them with a hyphen

Editor with nearly 20 years' experience here.

[Orrex]

10. You had me at apostrophe

Later on in the text I found the phrase "the long dead tomato." I'm going with "the long-dead tomato."

[Richardo]

11. I'm generally pro-hyphen.

*ahem* ^

I find that it does clarify matters when it's an ambiguous construction.

[struggle4progress]

13. If English had German's

make-new-words-by-slapping-together-old-words facility, then the hyphen would be a thing-not-much-needed

Here are my rules:

In very long prose pieces, or in journals or newspapers, just follow the suggested style manual -- unless there is very good reason to do otherwise. In shorter prose pieces, do whatever enhances readability: usually extra punctuation is merely tiresome, but add the hyphen if it helps. In literature (say, production scripts or poetry) where pronunciation and timing matter, use punctuation freely to suggest pronunciation and timing

[astral]

14. There are grammatical rules pertaining to hyphens,

whether people want to follow them or not. You can choose to spell things right or spell them however you want, you can choose to put things in 'quotations' just because you feel like it, you can choose to put commas where they would simply infer that the speaker took a breath, but there is still a correct way to punctuate and an incorrect way.

Some commas ARE optional; often a period and semi-colon are interchangeable providing you capitalize where you need to -- and I like to use dashes all over the place whether they are legal or not.

Still, when it comes to hypenation, there is ***always*** a right way and a wrong way. Prove me wrong, I might be!

Any mass encrusted with pepper needs a hyphen! (Except if you also use the word "with.")

No comma after "word."

Periods go inside quotation marks because it's "cleaner-looking."

Not sure whether that hyphen was warranted. This was a big head-butt between me and an English teacher when he insisted on the cleaner-looking punctuation after my years of grammar school had taught me punctuation is only quoted if the punctuation is part of the quotation.

We need not know what we are talking about here in other words, but some of us really think we do.

Let the Punch-You-Aeshion begin . . .

[pokerfan]

16. When in doubt, always toss in a hyphen, or a comma, or an em-dash

You can't, ever have, too--much punctuation!!!!

[WinkyDink]

17. Hyphen for both. Trust me!