Hyphen needed?

Question

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rainbow trout are late winter and spring spawners.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there a hyphen needed anywhere in the sentence above? Thank you for your input.&lt;/p&gt;

Canadian45 · Accepted Answer

AnonymousRainbow trout are late winter and spring spawners.

Is there a hyphen needed anywhere in the sentence above? Thank you for your input.

That's an interesting question for your sentence. But first consider the sentence below.

Rainbow trout are late-winter spawners. In this sentence there should be a hyphen. They are winter spawners, but they are not late spawners. They are late-winter spawners.

Rainbow trout are late winter and spring spawners. Logically, one could say that the hyphen in the above sentence should be used here too. But because "late winter" is separated from "spawners", a hyphen as in the first sentence seems less necesssary; it might even be considered odd.

So I would say that no hyphen is needed in your sentence. Others may not agree, but that is my opinion.
Sometimes the rules are flexible, depending on the particular situation.

RandomGuy · Answer

I’ve seen, for example, pro- and anti-IMF speeches. So I’m thinking why not Rainbow trout are late-winter and -spring spawners?

Canadian45 · Answer

Aspara GusI’ve seen, for example, pro- and anti-IMF speeches. So I’m thinking why not Rainbow trout are late-winter and -spring spawners?

possibly the 'most correct' but really necessary??

add: I just noticed, why is there no hyphen after "winter"?

RandomGuy · Answer

canadian45really necessary??

On second thought, no. I would be happy with late-winter and spring spawners. (No hyphen doesn’t work for me.)

canadian45why is there no hyphen after "winter"?

Should there be?

Canadian45 · Answer

Aspara GusOn second thought, no. I would be happy with late-winter and spring spawners.
That looks odd to me, and the "and" is part of the compound adjective. So we can't just omit those two hyphens. As it is, at least 'logically', it looks like there is a missing noun after "late-winter".
So the other choice is 'Rainbow trout are late-winter-and-spring spawners.' According to the rules, the previous sentence is the correct one.
But if there is no unanimous or majority consensus, maybe having no hyphens is the best choice. (Should the underlined part of this sentence be hyphenated as a compound adjective?)

Unless someone comes up with a very compelling answer, I think that using no hyphens is as good as anything discussed so far.

RandomGuy · Answer

canadian45'Rainbow trout are late-winter-and-spring spawners.'

canadian45But if there is no unanimous or majority consensus, maybe having no hyphens is the best choice. (Should the underlined part of this sentence be hyphenated as a compound adjective?)

No. It is not uncommon to join two attributive adjectives with a coordinator. That’s why late-winter and spring spawners is fine, just as a hot and delicious meal is (not a hot-and-delicious meal). The reason for this is that they are separate modifiers, unlike, for example, a hit-and-miss affair.

Canadian45 · Answer

Of course, I didn't really mean that "unanimous or majority" should be hyphenated, just as "hot and delicious" shouldn't be.
The ultra-hyphenated choice, while carrying some logic, is overly busy.
The sentence in question of course has the complication of having a compound adjective and a simple adjective. You prefer hyphenating the compound adjective, while I am inclined to not use a hyphen. So maybe we will leave it at that.

Anonymous · Answer

You make some interesting points. I'll add to the friendly discussion here by saying that I think a hyphen might very well be needed in the originally posted sentence; without it, "late" could be misread to modify both "winter" and "spring," hence rendering the meaning of the sentence

Rainbow trout are late winter and late spring spawners.

Take this sentence:

Sally is a large cat and dog breeder.

Granted it wouldn't be the most savvy way of conveying the idea, but if the intended meaning is that Sally breeds only large cats (yes, some breeds grow to be gargantuan) but all sizes of dogs, the sentence above could be misread to mean

Sally is a large cat and large dog breeder.

(Or even that Sally herself is a large person who breeds animals, though this is possibly taking one step too many outside the box.)

From a purely mechanical standpoint, hyphenating large-cat seems necessary to eliminate ambiguity of meaning. Personally, I think it looks atrocious, and I would just recast the sentence altogether before resorting to such measures:

Sally breeds dogs and large cats.
Sally is a breeder of dogs and large cats.

But my example serves to illustrate an argument for the need to hyphenate "late" and "winter" in the initially posted sentence:

Rainbow trout are late-winter and spring spawners.

The sentence certainly looks cleaner without the hyphen. And logic should dictate to most readers that because spring immediately follows winter, the sentence essentially means that rainbow trout reproduce from late winter on through spring. But who knows? Not everyone is well versed in the spawning methods of trout nor do many people read deductively.

Just another opinion to throw into the mix.

Goldfarb2 · Answer

Is a hyphen needed for "non-refereed" journal?

Hyphen needed?

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