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Translation - art & business » Linguistics »
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Hyphens in English with 3-word compounds?
Thread poster: across user (X)
Oliver Walter
Oliver Walter  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 15:46
German to English
+ ...
How I would state the rule Nov 9, 2016

Good explanations have been given,e.g. by John Fossey and cocannon.
I sometimes notice the incorrect presence or absence of hyphens and I describe the rule like this:
in the example "automatic disposal unit" or "automatic-disposal" unit the hyphen is correct if "automatic-disposal" is intended to be like a single adjective that describes "unit". If the sense is intended to be that it's (a) an automatic unit and (b) a disposal unit, the hyphen is omitted because each of the words "a... See more
Good explanations have been given,e.g. by John Fossey and cocannon.
I sometimes notice the incorrect presence or absence of hyphens and I describe the rule like this:
in the example "automatic disposal unit" or "automatic-disposal" unit the hyphen is correct if "automatic-disposal" is intended to be like a single adjective that describes "unit". If the sense is intended to be that it's (a) an automatic unit and (b) a disposal unit, the hyphen is omitted because each of the words "automatic" and "disposal" is an adjective that applies to "unit". ▲ Collapse
 
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Hyphens in English with 3-word compounds?


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