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Generally, as a rule, I always hyphenate words to make them into a single adjective, so I've been putting "blood-red", "forest-green", "royal-blue" and the like, but the moment I typed "royal-blue", my instincts kicked in.

It didn't look right to me. Perhaps it's because this is an official colour or the fact that the word "royal" is unrelated to blue, but I'm not sure.

What do you guys think?

P.S. I'm using British English, if that helps.

p.s.w.g
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Jordan Elliot Finch
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4 Answers4

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You would not use hyphens when the phrase is used as a noun:

Blood red had always been his favorite color.
The flag had white lion on a field of forest green.
The dress was a fine royal blue.

Generally, I'd recommend that you use hyphens when the phrase is used as an adjective (i.e. a compound modifier):

He drank the sweet, blood-red wine.
The flag, forest-green and proud, was raised at noon.
The royal-blue dress fitted her well.

However, if the color phrase is part of a larger adjectival phrase where the color phrase itself is being modified, leave the hyphens off:

Her extravagantly royal blue dress was a sight to behold.

There may be still be some disagreement on this, though, and there are no absolute rules that apply to all possible word combinations. You are free to use whatever form you feel is most natural and easy to understand.

Community
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p.s.w.g
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    The rule you state doesn't seem to work in the inverse cases: would "the wine was a lovely blood red" be correct (I say "yes"), or "she wore a fine royal-blue dress" (I think not.) The rule, in other words, is a little more complex. – MT_Head Aug 09 '13 at 00:44
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    @MT_Head Yes, I believe "she wore a fine, royal-blue dress" is correct (the dress is both fine and royal-blue). "she wore a fine royal blue dress" just seems weird to me. But I suppose "she wore a deep royal blue dress", is correct (the royal blue color is deep). I'll update my answer to try to clarify it a little more. – p.s.w.g Aug 09 '13 at 01:01
  • Thanks. This is what I had expected to the the answer. Well, it's the way I'm going to do things, at least. I have noticed that I've been automatically hyphenating a lot of things lately... – Jordan Elliot Finch Aug 09 '13 at 01:05
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    @p.s.w.g - If you run an Ngram for "royal blue" vs. "royal-blue", "royal-blue" barely shows up at all until the 1980s or so; it's still relatively rare. If you run "royal blue dress" vs. "royal-blue dress", it's a bit more even - but "royal blue dress" is still much more common. I'll grant you that "royal-blue dress" isn't incorrect per se, but it's definitely the minority opinion. – MT_Head Aug 09 '13 at 01:11
  • Also, apropos of nothing, I've got UB40's version of "Red Red Wine" stuck in my head now. I'm going to sing it as "Blood-Red Wine" from now on. – MT_Head Aug 09 '13 at 01:13
  • @MT_Head I agree, there may be some disagreement on this. The Ngram results for "blood red, blood-red" and "blood red wine, blood-red wine" are just the opposite. – p.s.w.g Aug 09 '13 at 01:20
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    The bottom line - and all I wanted to say, really - is that you can't make any hard-and-fast (see what I did there?) rule about this. It all comes down to how you, as a writer, feel about certain combinations; for instance, I have no problem with "lime-green panties" (from Catch-22), but "Kelly-green shorts" would be jarring to me. – MT_Head Aug 09 '13 at 01:26
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    Another complication is whereas most native English speakers would easily recognize, say, forest green or royal blue as a color in its own right (as opposed to a compound adjective); others may need a hyphen to distinguish a royal, blue dress from a royal-blue dress. In America, I've always just seen "royal blue dress" – Stu W Aug 14 '17 at 21:12
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As an add-on to the information in other answers, I would point out that color names that are made up of two colors can written with a hypen:

blue-green

NOUN A colour intermediate between blue and green; a pigment of this colour.

ADJECTIVE Of a colour intermediate between blue and green. Lexico

A colour intermediate between blue and green; a pigment of this colour.

1994 A. Theroux Primary Colors 4 The Greeks called the color kyanos (hence ‘cyan’) while the Romans would call it caeruleus, a name still used today for the artificial blue-green made from cobalt stannate.

2006 L. Eiseman Color: Messages & Meanings 78/2 By tweaking a true green to a blue green, an interesting new dimension is added. OED

Cool colors seem to recede from the eyes, which is why a dress in a blue-green looks smaller than it actually is. Linda Przybyszewski; The Lost Art of Dress

It discharged itself by a small stream into another, into which a number of large pines had been blown by a winter storm, or fallen from some other cause: in this lake its colour was blue green. Angler An; Salmonia

Some of these names may be more recent and may apply to specific points (values) in a color model (e.g., RGB or CMYK):

Wiki has entries for:

Red-violet is a deep tone of rosy magenta. Wiki

Red-purple is the color that is called Rojo-Purpura (the Spanish word for "red-purple") in the Guía de coloraciones (Guide to colorations) by Rosa Gallego and Juan Carlos Sanz, a color dictionary published in 2005 that is widely popular in the Hispanophone realm.

Although red-purple is a seldom used color name in English, in Spanish it is regarded one of the major tones of purple. Wiki

Displayed at right is the web color "orange-red". It was formulated in 1987 as one of the X11 colors, which became known as the X11 web colors after the invention of the World Wide Web in 1991.

At right is displayed the Crayola color "red-orange". It has been a Crayola color since 1930. Wiki

There are also what are known as impossible colors "that do not appear in ordinary visual functioning," but which the eye (brain) can be "tricked" into seeing. Two of those are yellow–blue and red-green. See the Wiki page for demonstrations. Wiki

We'd probably use terms like reddish orange, orangish red, and yellowish blue.

DjinTonic
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  • Yes, a good addition. This is one of those questions where a CV on lack-of-research grounds is warranted, the basics are basic, but there are depths worth exploring. – Edwin Ashworth Dec 14 '21 at 11:00
  • @ Thank you, @jsw29 I've noted that at the top. It seemed like too much information to cram into a comment(s). It would be nifty to have a "coda" answer button. – DjinTonic Dec 14 '21 at 16:46
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Some colors may be compound nouns, and wouldn't be hyphenated. "Blood red" isn't a color, but Forest Green is a color of green. No? He wore a blood-red tie. Her car was British racing green.

subs
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    No. Dictionaries list blood red as a compound. It may be a compound noun or a compound adjective; this depends on the actual way it is being used in a specific sentence. Used prenominally, it is usually hyphenated (a blood-red dawn). – Edwin Ashworth Aug 14 '17 at 20:00
  • Welcome to English Language & Usage StackExchange! It is recommended that you proved a reference to support your answer. This is to prevent opinion based answers and provides a more useful knowledge base. – Jammin4CO Aug 14 '17 at 20:37
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Dashes (not hyphens) connect words when their separation would be ambiguous:

Green table eating parrot.

We know that tables do not eat parrots, but this would be clearer

Green table-eating parrot.

Or even

Green-table-eating parrot. (although I would go for a re-write at this point)

In short, anytime the association between words is ambiguous, use dashes.

Richard Haven
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    No, hyphens connect words, not dashes (and I note you have used hyphens and not dashes in your examples). See Fowler (ed Burchfield 1998) p370. – Andrew Leach Aug 09 '13 at 07:16