Jose Carillo's Forum

ESSAYS BY JOSE CARILLO

On this webpage, Jose A. Carillo shares with English users, learners, and teachers a representative selection of his essays on the English language, particularly on its uses and misuses. One essay will be featured every week, and previously featured essays will be archived in the forum.

Rx for the hyphen in written English

Next to the comma, the hyphen is probably the most unappreciated and neglected elements of the English language. This is because this punctuation mark hardly figures at all in speech; no one really bothers—and hardly need to bother at all—to make the presence of the hyphen felt when uttering English words compounded by a hyphen. The tongue simply enunciates hyphenated words with a millisecond gap or so, as in “flood-ravaged cities,” and the hyphen’s job is done.

In written English, however, the presence of the hyphen where it should be—when using nouns to modify adjectives, and when using phrases to modify nouns—spells the difference between good and bad English and between the disciplined and undisciplined writer. It is for this reason that I wrote the essay below, “Hyphenating for clarity,” in my column in The Manila Times over two-and-a-half-years ago. I suggest you read it to find out how your English fares with respect to hyphen usage and how grammatically disciplined you are in your written English.

Click on the title below to read the essay.

Hyphenating for clarity

The clarity and precision of our written sentences are greatly dependent on how well we modify their various elements. Usually, of course, we modify nouns and pronouns with single adjective or adjective phrases (“The long wait is over.” “It was worth the trouble.”) and verbs with single adverbs or adverb phrases (The day was exceedingly bright.” “The fugitive was summarily brought to justice.”). Such grammatically simple modifications rarely leave room for doubt as to our intended meaning.

Every now and then, however, we need more complicated modifiers to convey precisely what we have in mind, as in this sentence: “Give me a real world example of a nation that was able to lift itself by its bootstraps.” The problem is that while the noun phrase “example of a nation” looks like it’s being modified by another noun phrase, “real world,” the context is so difficult to pin down. Are we referring to a “world example of a nation” that is real, which sounds nonsensical, or to an “example of a nation” in the real world, which seems to make sense but only vaguely?

Thankfully, English has a handy grammatical tool for fixing problems caused by the unusual compounding of its words: the hyphen. When we use the hyphen to form the composite word “real-world,” in particular, the semantic problem with the sentence we examined earlier simply vanishes: “Give me a real-world example of a nation that was able to lift itself by its bootstraps.” This time, it’s clear that “real-world” is meant to be a compound noun modifying the noun “example.”

Hyphenation can help us achieve clarity in meaning in two major grammatical situations: (1) when we use nouns to modify adjectives, and (2) when we use phrases to modify nouns. There are some generally accepted rules for hyphenating such compound modifiers.

Hyphenating nouns used to modify adjectives. When we use a noun up front to modify an adjective, we need to put a hyphen between them for clarity: “The insulin-dependent patient lived an otherwise normal life.” “The country promoted labor-intensive industries instead of capital-intensive ones.”

Such noun-adjective modifiers, however, typically need to do away with the hyphen when they come after the noun they are meant to modify: “The patient is no longer insulin dependent.” “The industries the country went into are not labor intensive.”

Hyphenating phrases used to modify nouns. When a phrase is meant to modify a noun up front, we need to hyphenate the phrase for clarity: “The big-budget film took five years to finish.” “The astute entrepreneur took advantage of the once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity.” (See what happens when we knock off those hyphens.)

When adverb-adjective phrases are used to modify a noun up front, we need to hyphenate them if the adverb doesn’t end in “-ly”: “Her long-ailing husband made a dramatic recovery.” “The short-tempered boxer got knocked out early in the second round.” But we should never do so when the adverb ends in “-ly”: “The US dollar is the nearest we have to a globally accepted currency.” “A hastily organized press conference was called by the beleaguered senatorial candidate.”

When one of the adjectives in a two-adjective modifying phrase is meant to modify the other, we need to place a hyphen between them for clarity: “The man lost his light-red jacket in the mall.” When both adjectives modify the same noun, however, we need to skip the hyphen: “The man lost his light red jacket in the mall.” (Figure that one out.)

Using the suspensive hyphen. To streamline sentences, we can use the so-called suspensive hyphen for a series of two or more hyphenated compound modifiers with the same base element: “Small- and medium-scale industries deserve government subsidy.” “We need five-, six-, and nine-meter poles for this project.” Here, the words “scale” and “meter” are base elements of the modifiers that are used only once for conciseness.

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, February 2, 2007 issue © 2007 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

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Previously Featured Essay:

“Like” and “such as” are such slippery grammar trippers

Surely one of the most slippery grammar trippers we will encounter in English is choosing between “like” and “such as” in forming comparative statements or giving examples. Which of them, for instance, is correctly used in the following two sentences? “Exemption from flight pre-boarding procedures like a thorough body search is usually granted to diplomats.” “Exemption from flight pre-boarding procedures such as a thorough body search is usually granted to diplomats.”

If you still haven’t figured out the correct usage, you may take comfort in the fact that you’re not alone in the predicament. The use of “like” and “such as” is actually considered correct in both sentences, but the choice between them has remained debatable all these years. We therefore need to carefully study both sides of the debate so we can put ourselves on more solid semantic footing regarding the usage.

Some grammarians insist that “such as,” which means “for example,” is the only correct usage in such constructions: “Exemption from flight pre-boarding procedures such as a thorough body search is usually granted to diplomats.” They maintain that “like” should never be used as a substitute for “such as,” arguing that “like” doesn’t convey the idea of giving an example at all. Instead, they say, “like” in this usage can only imply similarity, resemblance, or comparison, as in “Her pillow lips look like Angelina Jolie’s.”

Other grammarians are not as restrictive in their prescription for using “like” and “such as,” but they do recommend the following more precise usage for them: (1) Use “such as” to introduce one or more examples that represent a larger subject, as in “Eduardo has a collection of vintage cars such as the 1955 BMW 507 and the 1915 Vauxhall”; and (2) Use “like” to convey the idea that two subjects are comparable, as in “Alberto wants to be a vintage car collector like Ramon.”

Take note, though, that these same grammarians consider “like” to be a close semantic equivalent of “such as.” They are therefore not averse to substituting “like” for “such as” in the sentence given in Item 1: “Eduardo has a collection of vintage cars like the 1955 BMW 507 and the 1915 Vauxhall.” On the other hand, they would find it unthinkable for anyone to substitute “such as” for “like” in the sentence given in Item 2 above. To them, the resulting sentence is unacceptable because it isn’t natural-sounding or idiomatic: “Eduardo wants to be a vintage car collector such as Ramon.”

At any rate, “like” in modern spoken English has practically taken over the role of
“such as” in comparative statements. The forms “such as” and “such...as” are now largely confined to formal writing. “Like,” in contrast, is now the preferred form for informal usage in which the example being given is offered not simply as an example but as the topic of the sentence itself, as in this case: "We are delighted to have a generous benefactor like Bill Gates." Using “such as” instead of “like” in such sentences must be firmly avoided, for it gives the sentence a false ring: “We are delighted to have a generous benefactor such as Bill Gates.”

In formal writing, of course, we are well advised to distinguish carefully between “like” comparisons and “such as” comparisons. In a “like” comparison, only one person or object from the class is usually named, and that person or object is understood to be excluded from the group being discussed. Take this example: “If you are a student taught by a brilliant mathematics teacher like Prof. Alberto Reyes, you would learn differential calculus in no time at all.” This comparison is about the possibility of students being taught by mathematics teachers whose brilliance is comparable to Prof. Alberto Reyes’s, with Prof. Reyes himself specifically excluded from the comparison.

On the other hand, in a “such as” or “such...as” comparison, one or several persons or objects can be named in the comparison, and all of those persons or objects are understood to be included in the group being discussed. Take these two sentences:

“With highly capable mathematics professors such as Prof. Alberto Reyes and Prof. Eduardo Cariño handling the differential calculus classes, we can expect a much higher percentage of passing among the students.”

“With such highly capable mathematics professors as Prof. Alberto Reyes and Prof. Eduardo Cariño handling the differential calculus classes, we can expect a much high percentage of passing among the students.”

In both sentences, the comparison this time is about brilliant mathematics teachers as a class whose members include both Prof. Reyes and Prof. Cariño.

Now that we can clearly distinguish the semantic difference between “like” and “such as,” we should now be able to use them without fear of tripping in our grammar.

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, September 26, 2005 issue © 2005 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
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