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Anonymous Posted 11 years ago
Grammar

The use of the hyphen in compound words

Hi,

I've learned that compound words should be generally written with hyphen. However, I'm confused as I observe that this is often not the case. For example, authors of scientific papers use "labor market outcomes" instead of "labor-market outcomes" or "high school GPA" instead of "high-school GPA". Which one is correct?

Thanks.
Best, Tiasha
  

Top answer

Nouns can be used as modifiers of other nouns. Common collocations such as "high school" and "labor market" are not hyphenated. Adjectives (including participles) combined to form a compound word are generally hyphenated: a self-correcting mechanism a well-intentioned remark a baby-blue satin dress generally-accepted principles

— AlpheccaStars

  • Nouns can be used as modifiers of other nouns.
  • Common collocations such as "high school" and "labor market" are not hyphenated.
  • Adjectives (including participles) combined to form a compound word are generally hyphenated: a self-correcting mechanism a well-intentioned remark a baby-blue satin dress generally-accepted principles
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2 Answers
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Nouns can be used as modifiers of other nouns.
Common collocations such as "high school" and "labor market" are not hyphenated.

Adjectives (including participles) combined to form a compound word are generally hyphenated:

a self-correcting mechanism
a well-intentioned remark
a baby-blue satin dress
generally-accepted principles
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And with those adjectives, a useful trick is to ask yourself if they can stand alone modifying the noun--if they can't, they require a hyphen. (And if you use "stand-alone" as an adjective, it requires a hyphen!)

a large blue dress -- you can reasonably have a large dress, or a blue dress, so no hyphen is needed.

a torn-off scrap -- you can have a torn scrap, but not an off scra
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