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Vsuresh Posted 14 years ago
Grammar

hyphen/colon

Hi
Please tell me if colon suits this place as well.
This led to the deficit of essential-food, water, and fodder.
  

Top answer

This led to the deficit of essential food, water, and fodder. No punctuation is called for at all after "essential", it being an adjective that gets distributed along the list naturally. "

— Enoon

  • This led to the deficit of essential food, water, and fodder.
  • No punctuation is called for at all after "essential", it being an adjective that gets distributed along the list naturally.
  • "
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5 Answers
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This led to the deficit of essential food, water, and fodder.

No punctuation is called for at all after "essential", it being an adjective that gets distributed along the list naturally. If it had been "essentials", a hyphen would be wrong, and a colon would be good:

"This led to the deficit of essentials: food, water, and fodder."
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I'm sorry, enoon. I missed typing 'things' there.
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vsureshI'm sorry, enoon. I missed typing 'things' there.
Got it. Colon. The hyphen is not used that way.
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Hi enoon
Is hyphen OK here?
She read his letter that day- she rarely did that otherwise- and wanted to help him.
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You are confusing a hyphen with an em-dash. A hyphen is NEVER used that way.

Scroll down to the section on the dash on this page: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/566/01/

(The link will not be active right away. If you are impatient, you can search OWL Purdue dash.)
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