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Believer Posted 20 years ago
Grammar

Tell me why?

In one of the posts, I think Miriam wrote:

"early-evening diners" are people who have dinner early in the evening. "Early-evening " is hyphenated because that's one way of showing that "early" modifies "evening".

"black-and-white sriped woolly hat" and "award-winning album" are similar cases.

I ususally think of the reason why one needs to be hyphenated is that they are to be looked at as one word and the two words that are hyphenated and one functioning as a modifier is something hard to grasp. In the above sentence, is the word "early" acting as an adjective word "evening"? Help me to understand what is being talked about here.
  

Top answer

Yes, early is an adjective in the example you mentioned. htm ), a very good online resource for the English grammar. htm .

  • Yes, early is an adjective in the example you mentioned.
  • htm ), a very good online resource for the English grammar.
  • htm .
  • creating compound words, particularly modifiers before nouns (the well-known actor, my six-year-old daughter, the out-of-date curriculum creating compounds on-the-fly for fly-by-night organizations
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1 Answers
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Yes, early is an adjective in the example you mentioned. I took the following guidelines for using hyphens from Guide to Grammar and Writing (http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/index.htm ), a very good online resource for the Englis

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