Welcome to Writers Talkback. If you are a new user, your account will have to be approved manually to prevent spam. Please bear with us in the meantime

Grammar help - Hyphen

edited February 2017 in Writing
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

  • I'm not sure '60 cigarette dependency' is a compound. 'He was a 60-a-day man' might be... I've been wrong about this stuff before though.
  • Ta, it's a very interesting conundrum. now we're BOTH waiting for an authority!!
  • If you take the phrase 'his dependence upon sixty cigarettes a day' and then turn it round to 'a 60-cigarette dependence', it's hyphenated, on the basis of the rule that governs a table of stainless steel becoming a stainless-steel table. (As opposed to a stainless steel table, which would mean a spotless steel table.)

    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.


  • You really are a marvel, Mrs Bear. We can easily think we're a good writer until we stumble across a seemingly straight-forward (hyphenated?) problem such as this. And your tip about dependence is most welcomed and appreciated. If you need offer any reply, just call them 'smokes'. Thanks again.
  • Wow, Mrs Bear! I am struck dumb with admiration - or should that be dumb-struck?
    Or maybe even dumb-stricken?
Sign In or Register to comment.