0

An example term: super heavy-duty construction

herisson
  • 81,803
NRW
  • 11
  • 1
    https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/113422/how-to-use-hyphens-appropriately-when-listing-multiple-hyphenated-terms https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/15054/multiple-compound-words etc. – Davo Aug 08 '17 at 15:55
  • If you were asking *Is "heavyduty" always hyphenated?, the answer would be [No](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=heavyduty+plastic%2Cheavy+duty+plastic&year_start=1940&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cheavyduty%20plastic%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cheavy%20duty%20plastic%3B%2Cc0). Whether it should* be or not is a matter of opinion (but apparently Americans are more likely to discard the hyphen than Brits, according to that NGram). – FumbleFingers Aug 08 '17 at 16:04
  • The usual rule is to use a hyphen when the first adjective modifies the second rather than modifying the noun. – Carl Witthoft Aug 08 '17 at 19:20
  • Thanks, @FumbleFingers and Carl Would you agree that heavy is modifying duty in the example term, and therefore should be hyphenated? – NRW Aug 09 '17 at 20:21
  • @NRW: Don't ask me about what should happen in this context! In matters of orthography I'll agree with anyone that first-person *I* should be capitalised, or that people should write *should* rather than *shud, for example. But per the link in my first comment (posted to explain my "Primarily Opinion-based" closevote), as often as not your particular two words are concatenated without a hyphen in the very common collocation heavyduty plastic. Choose whichever you like, but don't go thinking the alternative is "wrong". It's just that - an alternative*. – FumbleFingers Aug 10 '17 at 12:58

1 Answers1

0

Depends what you mean by should.

From a grammatical point of view, no.

From the point of view of making your writing clear — yes, it is not a matter of opinion.

Why? To avoid what Fowler in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage called false scent.

Simplifying by leaving out ‘super’, if I read:

heavy duty construction

the first word I encounter is an adjective, ‘heavy’, and this is followed by a noun, ‘duty’, so — depending on the sentence — I may initially think that ‘duty’ is the operative noun, qualified by ‘heavy’. When I read the third word ‘construction’ I have to reset in my mind that ‘heavy duty’ is being used adjectivally to describe ‘construction’.

If I write:

heavy-duty construction

there is no possibility of such ambiguity.

One could argue that ‘heavy duty’ is such a familiar grouping that it is unlikely to lead to ambiguity, but in general I would suggest it is better to make a habit of avoiding ambiguity rather than deliberating over the familiarity of each word combination. In the case where there is a preceding adjective it is certainly necessary to increase clarity. Thus in:

extremely heavy duty construction

(I have replaced ‘super’ by ‘extremely’ — see footnote) one would read ‘extremely heavy’ as if the adjective just qualified ‘heavy’ and then have to perform a mental reset on seeing that it is meant to describe ‘heavy duty’. Again,

extremely heavy-duty construction

has no such problem.

I would suggest finally that it is better to have a logical reason for hyphenation that you can remember and justify, rather than mindlessly trying to follow some ngram trend.

Footnote on ‘super’

I am not sure whether you are using ‘super’ as a simple adjective like ‘very’ or as a technical term as in ‘supersonic’. That is why I replaced it by ‘extremely’ in my example. You do not ask specifically about ‘super’, but if it were a technical or trade designation I would assume that it was in a late stage of amalgamation, having passed the (in this case) awkward hyphenation phase, and write it: ‘superheavy duty’, by analogy to ‘superheavy elements’. As an adjectival phrase I would write ‘superheavy-duty construction’.

David
  • 12,625