Link them with hyphens?

I would use hyphens.

Hi! Yes, use hyphens, because these are compound adjectives, not two separate adjectives.

Anonymous Should there be hyphens?

Yes, but you need to put them in the right places.

You need to attend either a city-sponsored (program) or a state-sponsored program.

You need to attend both a city-sponsored (program) and a state-sponsored program.

The use of the suspended hyphen is fine.

You can say "a city- or state-sponsored program."

The first- and second-year students are in the library.

All full- and part-time students are welcome to apply.

Grammar GeekThe use of the suspended hyphen is fine. You can say "a city- or state-sponsored program." The first- and second-year students are in the library. All full- and part-time students are welcome to apply.

That looks pretty casual. Do people actually write it like that in formal writing?

Funnily enough, yes. It's perfectly correct and formal, reduces wordiness and improves readability :-)

No! They're not hyphens! They're dashes. A hyphen is punctuation mark - to join compound words or to split a word actross lines. A dash is the punctuation mark — used to indicate a sudden change of subject or to enclose a parenthetical remark.

A dash is longer than a hyphen. To use the dash in programs like MS Word type two hyphen characters between the two words without spaces inbetween

Interesting. They look correctly like hyphens for me, so I wonder if it depends on the browser? Maybe that's a silly thing to say; I'm not an expert on this stuff.

Anyway, to clarify, it is hyphens that are needed here (the short ones), as they are being used to form compound words.

My apologies. Yes. You are right. I saw them as dashes.

[Y]

MashaPavlovnaFunnily enough, yes. It's perfectly correct and formal, reduces wordiness and improves readability :-)