photo credit: bettyx1138

Adjectives are tricky little buggers. While usually limited to modifying nouns and pronouns, they sometimes modify other adjectives as part of compound adjectives. These compounds should be hyphenated when they appear before the noun or pronoun they modify, and unhyphenated when they appear after it. For example:

John is a second-rate dancer.

but

As a dancer, John is second rate.

Why hyphenate?

These compounds should be hyphenated to avoid confusion. Consider the following sentence:

I’m concerned by my blue-green pee.

As written, we are well aware that the urine in question should be somewhere between clear and yellow. But if it weren’t hyphenated

I’m concerned by my blue green pee.

We’re a little confused. That’s because adjectives modify the whole noun that follows it. In this case, “blue” modifies “green pee.” Why should his pee be green? If green pee turns blue, is that really any further cause for concern? 

My favorite example is from Eats, Shoots & Leaves. I paraphrase:

The pickled-herring vendor.

The hyphen transforms the vendor in question from a drunk fish monger into a monger trafficking in drunk fish.  It’s very important to know who, exactly, is drunk. (That’s not what pickled herrings are, idiot—ed.)

But what about the adverbs?

Sometimes adverbs come together with adjectives to form supermodifiers. The process is quite similar to the one employed by Voltron. They generally work the same as adjectives:

Well-fed zombies pose no threat.

but

There’s no reason to fear a zombie that’s well fed.

There is one exception: Adverbs ending in -ly are not hyphenated. Ever.

I hit the hungry zombie with a roughly hewn rock.

Go forth and hyphenate

Now that you know the rules, you can keep your readers from accusing innocent merchants of looking for love in the bottom of a bottle. Improperly hyphenated compounds are not just aggravating to grammar snobs, they are potentially confusing. 

One last thing: If you’ve been eating copious amounts of red velvet cake, you shouldn’t be too concerned by the color of anything that leaves your body. Trust me on this.

This article was written by John Roach http://prowritingtips.com John is a writer and copy editor. You can follow him on twitter at @johnwroachiii. To see more posts click here

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