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I'm not a native English speaker so I'm struggling to get this right.

I understand (and this question confirms) that compound adjectives such as well-organized, high-level, Spanish-speaking, etc, must have a hyphen. In particular, for us non-native speakers, it really helps to instantly, on-the-march disambiguate some sentences, to tell if, e.g., we are referring to a Spanish person that is speaking right now, or about any person who can speak Spanish.

However, I'm finding more and more cases were the hyphen is omitted in compound adjectives, such as this in Wikipedia.

The Cannone da 90/53 was an Italian designed cannon

I know that Wikipedia is hardly a writing style reference, but this is far from a rare case.

My question: is this a plain error or is the hyphen considered optional nowadays?

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LexLythius
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  • Have you read this? – Tyler James Young Oct 02 '13 at 07:32
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    My impression is that you have a perfect grasp of proper hyphen use and should go boldly forth correcting Wikipedia as you see fit. – Tyler James Young Oct 02 '13 at 07:35
  • I hadn't found that particular article. Very helpful indeed. – LexLythius Oct 02 '13 at 07:45
  • And do notice the wise comments – Hellion's, I believe – in the square brackets: . . . [There are, of course, exceptions to this, as in "her reply was thought provoking."] 6.41: [contrary to its earlier positions,] The University of Chicago Press now takes the position that the hyphen may be omitted in all cases where there is little or no risk of ambiguity or hesitation.>> 'Rules' (1) are rarely universal (2) are subject to change (hopefully, for the better) – Edwin Ashworth Oct 02 '13 at 07:55
  • I fixed the Italian-designed for you :) – mplungjan Oct 02 '13 at 07:56
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    @mplungjan You could not live with that error either, did you :) (you saved me the trouble) – LexLythius Oct 02 '13 at 08:00
  • @EdwinAshworth Right. I find English rules more fluid than Spanish. Probably, that's the reason English is by far the most flexible and versatile language I've come across. – LexLythius Oct 02 '13 at 08:04
  • Yes - having pinched the best parts of almost every other language over the years, and done a fair amount of tinkering, many anglophones would say it's hard to beat. Except for use in operas. Of course, its strengths are also its weaknesses - there are crazy inconsistencies and logically inexplicable constructions. – Edwin Ashworth Oct 02 '13 at 08:14

2 Answers2

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Try not to think of this in terms of error, but in terms of what makes a text easier to read. That’s what punctuation is for. In your example, I don’t know what a ‘Cannone da 90/53’ is, so when I read it, the absence of the hyphen makes me wonder briefly if it’s an Italian. A hyphen linking Italian and designed would have removed that temporary ambiguity and thus made the sentence more effective.

Barrie England
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  • Thanks. BTW, 'Cannone da 90/53' is Italian standing for '90 mm, 53 calibers-length barrel cannon' – LexLythius Oct 02 '13 at 07:38
  • Good to know, but not something I think I'll have much use for in the foreseeable future. – Barrie England Oct 02 '13 at 07:40
  • :) Sure, it just happened to be the case I had at hand. In that context, it is relatively safe to assume that the reader has enough background about weapons to know that 'Cannone da 90/53' comes as a noun in the phrase. – LexLythius Oct 02 '13 at 07:43
  • I thought it might be a work by one of the Gabrieli boys. – Edwin Ashworth Oct 02 '13 at 07:46
  • @EdwinAshworth I always wondered myself whether canon (cánon in Spanish) and cannon (cañón) had common ethymology or not. – LexLythius Oct 02 '13 at 07:50
  • @BarrieEngland Re-reading your answer I find some extra clue about English: "That’s what punctuation is for." Spanish is less dependent on context, so punctuation responds to rules rather than convenience. – LexLythius Oct 02 '13 at 07:58
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    @LexLythius: I'd claim that in English, punctuation is harnessed for improved clarity and breadth of expression rather than out of a misdirected nostalgia. – Edwin Ashworth Oct 02 '13 at 08:05
  • And it depends what you mean by rules. – Barrie England Oct 02 '13 at 08:06
  • @BarrieEngland I mean that in Spanish, we have reglas ortográficas (ortographic rules) and reglas gramáticas (grammatical rules) along the same lines we have reglas de juego (game rules) or reglas de convivencia (rules of conduct). It is something to be enforced, more or less regardless of convenience. – LexLythius Oct 02 '13 at 08:12
  • @EdwinAshworth misdirected nostalgia is a great way of describing tradition :) – LexLythius Oct 02 '13 at 08:12
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Since you mentioned the English Wikipedia: the manual of style on hyphens agrees with you, that hyphens are often recommended to make reading easier:

Hyphens can help with ease of reading (face-to-face discussion, hard-boiled egg); where non-experts are part of the readership, a hyphen is particularly useful in long noun phrases, such as those in Wikipedia's scientific articles: gas-phase reaction dynamics. However, hyphens are never inserted into proper names in compounds (Middle Eastern cuisine, not Middle-Eastern cuisine).

So you can definitely go ahead and add some hyphens where you feel they help understanding, as mentioned in the comments. (The section continues with several more paragraphs of details, by the way.)

Nemo
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