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The Blur

Questions Thread

By The Blur, in General Chat

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potter3

potter3

Posted
Posted

Here's one for the grammatically inclined: which one of these is correct in formal writing?

 

For a two and a half year period prior to this

 

 

For a two-and-a-half-year period prior to this

 

I feel like it's the hyphenated phrase, it just looks wrong for some reason.

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Rincewind

Rincewind

Posted
Posted

Here's one for the grammatically inclined: which one of these is correct in formal writing?

 

 

 

I feel like it's the hyphenated phrase, it just looks wrong for some reason.

Is there a need for hyphenation? It adds nothing. They are all full words not abbreviated like co or pre. Hyphens should not be over-used. Or overused. 

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Guest Kopfkino

Guest Kopfkino

Posted
Posted

Here's one for the grammatically inclined: which one of these is correct in formal writing?

 

 

 

I feel like it's the hyphenated phrase, it just looks wrong for some reason.

Yeah it's the hyphenated one, general rule when writing about time periods is to hyphenate unless plural

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Alf Bentley

Alf Bentley

Posted
Posted

Here's one for the grammatically inclined: which one of these is correct in formal writing?

 

 

 

I feel like it's the hyphenated phrase, it just looks wrong for some reason.

 

 

Hyphenated - and looks right to me.

 

"two-and-a-half-year" is a single compound adjective describing the noun "period".

 

In contrast, it would be "for a period of two and a half years" (no hyphenation), I think.

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potter3

potter3

Posted
Posted

Is there a need for hyphenation? It adds nothing. They are all full words not abbreviated like co or pre. Hyphens should not be over-used. Or overused. 

 

You're just a maverick, Ken.

 

Yeah it's the hyphenated one, general rule when writing about time periods is to hyphenate unless plural

 

 

Hyphenated - and looks right to me.

 

"two-and-a-half-year" is a single compound adjective describing the noun "period".

 

In contrast, it would be "for a period of two and a half years" (no hyphenation), I think.

 

Cheers guys. That's along the lines I was thinking Alf, you hyphenate when it's used as an adjective.

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Alf Bentley

Alf Bentley

Posted
Posted

You're just a maverick, Ken.

 

 

 

 

Cheers guys. That's along the lines I was thinking Alf, you hyphenate when it's used as an adjective.

 

 

To be fair to Ken, linguistic rules are made to be bent and broken in the interests of self-expression:

 

https://qwiklit.com/2014/03/05/top-10-authors-who-ignored-the-basic-rules-of-punctuation/

 

If ignoring the basic rules of punctuation is good enough for Joyce, as arguably the greatest writer in the English language, it's good enough for the likes of us!  :thumbup:

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Webbo

Webbo

Posted
Posted

Fif definitely has alternate accounts here though, I think Molly was Fif.

I don't think so but it's hard to know for sure. I always assumed Molly was a school girl.

 

There are a couple of posters on here I suspect of being Moose.

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