Poll

Good day, Sir. Which of the following compound terms should have hyphens and why?

street dancing competition
0 (0%)
public speaking contest
0 (0%)
much awaited event
0 (0%)
fund raising activity
0 (0%)

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Author Topic: compound terms  (Read 4413 times)

english editor

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compound terms
« on: May 27, 2011, 06:26:54 PM »
Good day, Sir.

Which of the following compound terms should be hyphenated and why?

1. street dancing competition
2. public speaking contest
3. much-awaited event
4. fund raising activity

We at the office are quite "confused" as to when to hyphenate these. According to the Chicago Manual of Style, we hyphenate a compound term when it is used as an adjective before a noun (as in the case of number 3?) However, our "confusion" sets in when the term is composed of a noun and a gerund. We editors have different interpretations of the guidelines given by Chicago Manual of Style. I hope you can enlighten us on this. Thank you very much.

Joe Carillo

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Re: compound terms
« Reply #1 on: May 27, 2011, 08:24:27 PM »
All of the two-word compound modifiers of the four terms you presented need to be hyphenated. This is because the words in each of those word-pairs are not acting as individual modifiers but as a single adjective modifying the noun that follows them. In the interest of clarity, therefore, the four items you listed should all be written as follows:

1. street-dancing competition
2. public-speaking contest
3. much-awaited event
4. fund-raising activity

There really should be no cause for confusion when the compound modifier consists of a noun and a gerund. A gerund, after all, is a verb form that functions as a noun; indeed, in a word-pair like, say, “street dancing,” the word “dancing” is actually a gerund modified by the noun “street” functioning as an adjective. To make sure that this word-pair is clearly understood as acting as a single modifier of another noun, the convention in English is to hyphenate the word-pair, as in “street-dancing competition.” When the word-pair isn’t hyphenated in written form, as in “street dancing competition,” the modification becomes ambiguous. The word-pair “dancing competition” could conceivably be also understood as a compound term modified by the noun “street” acting as a adjective—a modification that gives rise to the absurd idea of “a dancing competition among streets.”

The two-word modifier in the term “much-awaited event” also needs to be hyphenated, but this time the reason for hyphenating is different—it is to make sure that the adverb “much” is clearly understood to be modifying the past participle “awaited” and not the compound term “awaited event.” We need to keep in mind that in such instances, the past participle functions as an adjective, and the convention in English is to hyphenate the pairing of such an adjective with an adverb right before it, as in “much-awaited event.” There’s an exception to this convention, though. When the adverb ends in “-ly,” like “keenly,” the hyphen becomes unnecessary, as in “keenly awaited event.” 

For a more comprehensive discussion of hyphenation, click this link to “Hyphenating for Clarity,” an essay of mine that I posted in the Forum in October of 2009.