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Compound nouns

Posted by Smokey Stover on February 21, 2004

In Reply to: Compound nouns posted by Sathyaish on February 20, 2004

: Thank you, once more, ESC.

Thanks, ESC, for quoting the A.P. Style Book about compound nouns. The Manual of Style published by the Princeton U.P. has not been absolutely consistent from one edition to another, but their general view is somewhat the reverse of the A.P. Style Book. With some exceptions, especially among oft-used expressions like "well-dressed," the Manual of Style says that the hyphen is likely to be needed more in the attributive position (before the noun modified) than in the predicate position (after the verb). It has a fairly elaborate discussion of the choice between adding the modifier (whether noun, adjective or adverb) by means of a hyphen, omitting the hyphen but leaving a space, or joining the two words with no hyphen and no space (resulting in a compound word). SS

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