Author Topic: Why we need to hyphenate certain compound modifiers  (Read 12146 times)

Joe Carillo

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Why we need to hyphenate certain compound modifiers
« on: August 14, 2010, 02:15:44 PM »
If you regularly follow my weekly critiques of the English usage of the four major Philippine broadsheets, or read at least one of the broadsheets on a daily basis, you must have noticed that their news and feature stories frequently miss hyphenating certain modifiers that need to be hyphenated or do the required hyphenation wrongly. In fact, this happens so often in that I have learned to ignore practically all of such errors except when the faulty hyphenation seriously distorts the semantics of the sentence.

In such cases, I’m left with no choice but to dissect the unhyphenated or wrongly hyphenated modifier, as I have done for the unhyphenated compound modifier “above normal” in this grammatically flawed sentence that I critiqued in this week’s edition of My Media English Watch: “Pagasa said above normal rainfall is expected over most parts of the Bicol region this month which might trigger flood, flashfloods and landslides in the area” (For my full critique of this sentence, click this link to Item 4 of “Four very instructive problematic sentences from the broadsheets”). 

I’m sure that on first reading, you found it not so easy to grasp what that sentence is saying, with the phrase “above normal rainfall” proving to be a major stumbling block to understanding it. We just can’t be absolutely sure whether the adjective “above” is modifying the term “normal rainfall,” or whether the compound modifier “above normal” is modifying “rainfall.”

On closer inspection, of course, we find that the latter is the case. To make sure that everybody understands this, however, we need to hyphenate “above normal” into the compound modifier “above-normal.” Only in this hyphenated form, in fact, can that compound modifier’s function be clearly understood in the corrected sentence: “Pagasa said that above-normal rainfall is expected over most parts of the Bicol region this month, a development that might trigger flood, flashfloods and landslides in the area.”

At this point, I’m sure this big question has already come to mind: Are there hard-and-fast rules for hyphenating compound modifiers? Yes, there certainly are, and I discussed them in an essay, “The matter of hyphenated modifiers,” that I wrote about the subject in May last year. I am posting that essay in this week’s edition of the Forum to give everyone a clear idea precisely how that hyphenation should be done. (August 14, 2010) 

The matter of hyphenated modifiers

One of the early posts in Jose Carillo’s English Forum when it was launched last year was this very interesting question on how to handle multiword modifiers:

Quote
In these two sentences, “John attended a 5-day course from April 25 to 29, 2009” and “John attended a 5-days course from April 25 to 29, 2009,” why is the usage of “a 5-day-course” in the first sentence correct and the usage of “a 5-days course” in the second sentence wrong? What is the rule governing this usage?

To understand this seemingly peculiar state of affairs, we must first recognize that a hyphenated modifier that precedes a noun is actually an abbreviated or short-hand form of an equivalent but longer modifying phrase that comes after that noun. For instance, the hyphenated modifier “a five-day course” is the shorthand form of the words that comes after the noun “course” in this longer version of the sentence in question: “John attended a course that ran for five days from April 25 to 29, 2009.” (Simply for consistency of style, I have spelled out the numeral “5” to “five” in these discussions.)

Now, the English grammar rule for converting a modifying phrase that comes after a noun into a modifier that precedes the noun is this: use a hyphen to link the word for the quantity or measure with the word specifying the amount or number, but always change the word for the quantity or measure into its singular form. In the particular example that we are discussing, the quantity or measure is “days,” so we need to change it to the singular form “day.” This is why the long phrase “a course that ran for five days” gets transformed into “a five-day course” instead of “a five-days course” when converted into a modifier that will precede the noun it modifies.

Once we get the hang of this conversion process, we can do it routinely without any problem. However, we will find that matters won’t be as simple when the amount or number specified for the quantity or measure in the modifying phrase that comes after the noun can’t be reduced into a single word. For instance, the specification may be “a course that runs for five and a half days” instead of “five,” or, to use an even more complicated specification, “a painting done during the turn of the century.” What do we do in such instances?

The rule in such situations is this: hyphenate all the words in the multiword modifier that will precede the noun to be modified. For instance, the modifying phrase “that runs for five and a half days” becomes the multi¬word modifier “five-and-a-half-day” when placed ahead of the noun, resulting in the form “a five-and-a-half-day seminar.” In the same manner, the modifying phrase “done during the turn of the century” becomes the multi¬word modifier “turn-of-the-century” when placed ahead of the noun to be modified, resulting in the form “a turn-of-the-century painting.”

We must always keep in mind that in forming hyphenated modifiers to be placed ahead of the noun they will modify, the rule for changing the specification of quantity or measure from its plural to singular form likewise applies to words that inflect or change in spelling when pluralized, like “woman” to “women,” “party” to “parties,” and “millennium” to “millennia.”

Thus, when we transform the modifier “that consists of five women” in the phrase “a team that consists of five women” into a modifier preceding the noun “team,” it becomes the hyphenated modifier “five-woman” in “five-woman team.” Similarly, “a system with three parties” becomes “a three-party system,” and “a glacial period that lasted 100 millennia” becomes “a 100-millennium glacial period.” (May 9, 2009)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, May 9, 2009, © 2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
« Last Edit: August 14, 2010, 02:18:26 PM by Joe Carillo »

kanajlo

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Re: Why we need to hyphenate certain compound modifiers
« Reply #1 on: September 05, 2010, 02:03:09 PM »
It's often overlooked that the written numbers twenty-one to ninety-nine need hyphens. It is preferable to write them out completely instead of simply writing 21 and 99.

A "three-year-old" or a "three-year-old child" requires hyphenation.

Miss Mae

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Re: Why we need to hyphenate certain compound modifiers
« Reply #2 on: December 22, 2011, 05:04:00 PM »
Uh, does this mean another power for writers--to come up with hyphenated modifiers provided they follow the 'rules'?