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One for perhaps Mrs Bear or Baggy Books. I have already checked my Harts and Fowlers, so am not taking the easy way out.
I have a sentence: ' . . . his daily 60-cigarette dependency'. Am I correct in hyphenating '60-cigarette' because I am making it compound, in as much the same way as 20-mile radius?
Bit heavy for a Sunday, but I'll shout the next round of Jaffa Cakes!! Ta.
Comments
Try removing the numerals:
His daily dependence; his daily cigarette dependence; his daily sixty cigarette dependence; his daily sixty-cigarette dependence
Can you have sixty cigarette? Without a hyphen you'd have to have sixty cigarettes.
His is a dependence upon sixty cigarettes; in your phrase, you are turning the number and the cigarettes into a unit modifying the noun, which is the dependence.
Does that make sense? Hope so! Do you know how impossible it is to type cigarette correctly that many times?
OED: dependency: a country or province controlled by another
or mass noun: the country's dependency upon the oil industry
I'd use dependence.
Or maybe even dumb-stricken?