1 / 9

What are they?

What are they?. Much like compound nouns: they combine two words to create a new term . Bright + lit + streets  Brightly-lit streets The hyphenate designates that the two words work as a unit. [Brightly-lit] streets. Why does this matter?. Building them.

shiloh
Download Presentation

What are they?

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. What are they? • Much like compound nouns: they combine two words to create a new term. • Bright + lit + streets  Brightly-lit streets • The hyphenate designates that the two words work as a unit. [Brightly-lit] streets. • Why does this matter?

  2. Building them • Plenty of construction patterns. Some common ones: • Adjective+noun • Fifteen-minute presentation. • Adjective/Adverb + past participle • Good-looking actor. • Well-done steak. • Adjective-and-adjective • Black-and-blue mark.

  3. Exceptions • The hyphens eliminate ambiguity. When ambiguity is unlikely, hyphens are unneeded: • Usually, there is no need to link an adverb to an adjective using a hyphen. • Young Tracey is an extremely brave girl. • The adverb 'extremely' modifies the adjective 'brave' but is not part of it. • Well-done is one of the corner cases.

  4. A Years-old Problem: • Punctuating “years old.” • Simple rule: only hyphenate a phrase like “X years old” when it is modifying a noun, or being used itself as a noun.

More Related