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Hyphenating?

pbwpbw
edited April 2011 in - Writing Problems
Should I hyphenate pot hole?

Is it pot hole or pot-hole?

Comments

  • Oh that's funny, I mean, that simply didn't occur to me. Word spell check didn't throw it up.
    Pothole it is then. I will have some more soon.

    No prizes for guessing that I'm copy editing. My god...
  • OK here's the next one...

    I'm describing an Autumn scene

    He slows down to admire a species of tree I don’t recognize, whose furnace-red and cadmium-yellow leaves make it look like a pillar of flames.

    or is it

    He slows down to admire a species of tree I don’t recognize, whose furnace red and cadmium yellow leaves make it look like a pillar of flames.
  • pbwpbw
    edited April 2011
    If you have an acronym, in a text, do you capitalise it? e.g. is it dna or DNA?

    In my case I want to say pda (personal digital assistant). Is it pda or PDA?
  • furnace-red and cadmium-yellow is pretty standard. Though some publishers would take out the hyphens. I'd say put them in - it's defnitely not wrong.

    DNA is standard.

    I would go for PDA too, though I'm not so sure on this one. Acronyms usually start out as capitalised, and through common use go lowercase. Not sure if this has happened to PDA/pda. (I wouldn't have even known what the letters stood for if you hadn't told me...)
  • As I am prone to inconsistency, I currently have both in my m/s and I agree with you, PDA looks better. I'm inclined to think capitalisation is correct.
  • is it break-up or breakup (with a boy, i.e relationship)?
  • capitalisation definitely, the words hyphenated, definitely not. They do not connect. They describe.
  • [quote=paperbackwriter]I am prone to inconsistency[/quote]

    A good idea is to make a note in your re-edit folder or whatever system you use. E.g. pothole, stepmother, apple-white, to remind you that this is the one you're going with throughout. Perhaps consistency throughout your MS is more important than getting it right, because it'll show attention to editing.
  • To be sure you're consistent with things such as pda/PDA, as soon as you've decided which to use, do a 'find and replace' to make them all the same.
  • edited April 2011
    Um ... I look things up in my Chambers (no apostrophe nowadays) dictionary. The newish one, not the one circa 1933.
  • Yes, Jay. I have to admit that queries like these always puzzle me. Don't people use dictionaries any more? A quick (fifteen second) check gave me pothole and cadmium yellow. Incidentally, cadmium yellow is a standard pigment, while furnace-red is not. The former is not hyphenated, the latter (a compound word) should be, I think.
  • Yes, I agree about cadmium yellow on reflection - sorry, I should have remembered it was the name of a pigment.
  • [quote=Dwight]A good idea is to make a note in your re-edit folder[/quote]

    Gulp! I didn't KNOW about re-edit folders. Thanks Dwight.
  • [quote=Rosalie]sorry[/quote]
    no problem - and I should have remembered too, seeing as I'm also an oil painter.
  • edited March 2012
    16th March 2012

    A national newspaper put the word "everything" on two lines. They split the word after 3 letters. I've seen a lot of American books do the same. Why on earth don't they split it logically i.e. "every" on one line and "thing" on the next?
  • Possibly the spell checker recognised eve as a word, Jay, so didn't worry. The rything bit should have thrown a wobbly though.

    Okay: the Oxford style manual has the following instructions:
    a stainless-steel table, but a table of stainless steel.
    The hand is blood red: the blood-red hand.
    The rule here is that compound modifiers that follow a noun don't use hyphens, but two (or more) modifiers preceding the noun do.
    An adjectival compound (happily married) - with an adverb that ends in ly doesn't have a hyphen.

    I'd recommend getting a style manual: though the jargon can be a bit hard to follow at times, the explanatory examples make it (mostly) clear.
  • This is very technical. I'm hyphenventilating now.
  • Yep, those are the rules I've been taught in my proofreading course.

    A bit complicated, yes.

    They are important if you are an editor/proofreader, but it you are an author they are the kind of thing your publishers should put right for you. If you are self-publishing - another good reason to pay a professional editor to check your work. :)
  • but you know me well enough by now to know I couldn't resist the play on words. :)
  • [quote=paperbackwriter] hyphenventilating[/quote]
    Good grief!
  • Lovely word! :)
  • edited March 2012
    [quote=bertiebear]An adjectival compound (happily married) - with an adverb that ends in ly doesn't have a hyphen.[/quote]

    Thanks for that one. (I wonder why it doesn't have a hyphen.)

    I have a feeling that newpapers, etc, often omit hyphens that are required.
  • Ah, I see.

    Red-hot lover as opposed to red hot lover!

    You don't get that with a happily married man. :)
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