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I have following sentence on a product packaging as a tagline.

Easy to use kitchen tools to simplify your workload.

I've asked a few native speakers and they said, that "Easy to use" would be a compound adjective and therefore require hyphens.

In this sentence, is it a must to add hyphens?

Sorry if anything is wrong, not a native speaker here.

KillingTime
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Pedro
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    If you want it to be a compound adjective then it should be hyphenated, otherwise it's simply a syntactic construction with "easy" as head and "to use" as its complement. – BillJ Mar 15 '22 at 13:24
  • Which is more correct? Thing about this is a tagline which goes as a representation of a product. – Pedro Mar 15 '22 at 13:32
  • This is the main reason I wrote this. I am unsure about the hyphens in this exact case. The explanations in the somewhat similar answers are far beyond my understanding :/ – Pedro Mar 15 '22 at 15:06
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    Does this answer your question? "easy to use" versus "easy-to-use" Used before the noun, the string is usually hyphenated, but this is governed largely by Gricean requirements for clarity and ease of reading rather than strict laws of morphology say. Though Gricean maxims are usually held to be binding. – Edwin Ashworth Mar 15 '22 at 15:49
  • Are you dong advertising copy? Then, yes, as an adjective, hyphenate it. – Lambie Mar 15 '22 at 16:14
  • And yet it fails one of the tests for compoundhood in that it can enter into coordination. cf. "easy and reliable to use". This might lead one to regard it as as syntactic construction with "easy" as head and "to use" as its complement, i.e. not a compound adjective but an adjective phrase. On the other hand, it can only be modified as a whole: "very easy-to use kitchen tools". – BillJ Mar 15 '22 at 17:58
  • @billJ so the proper english one, would be not Easy-to-use but Easy-to use? – Pedro Mar 15 '22 at 18:59
  • @EdwinAshworth very respectfully, no. We have even debates on this little hyphenated sentence ☹️ – Pedro Mar 15 '22 at 18:59
  • << Easy-to-use kitchen tools to simplify/ease your workload >> is standard; << Easy to use kitchen tools to simplify/ease your workload >> might be frowned at by hyperprescriptivists. But it is perfectly clear, and there is a tendency to gravitate towards light punctuation. It depends on which native speaker you ask. – Edwin Ashworth Mar 15 '22 at 20:11

2 Answers2

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It is better to use hyphens.

We usually use hyphens to show that it works as one adjective.

'easy to use' with hyphens ➜ easy-to-use tools (Here easy-to-use is an adjective.)

'easy to use' without hyphens ➜ 'The tools are easy to use.' (Here 'easy' is an adjective.)

[ seven-year-old boy, three-day holiday, two-hour journey, five-page document etc. ]

Mohammad Farukh Ahmad
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There are few "musts" in language. There are in fact no grammar police who will incarcerate you for mistakes. Instead, ask yourself what are the consequences? The worst consequence of poor choices is often that your meaning is not understood. Even if the reader is confused for only moments and then figures it out, you don't want to put obstacles in the way of your communication. Other consequences might include bad grades from a teacher who has certain expectations about usage, or scorn in certain social contexts.

I'm a big fan of hyphens in compound modifiers. But I don't think even I can claim that every single compound must always have them. I'm a fan of them because omitting them often creates confusion, but this phrase runs little danger of that. The compound starts the sentence, and we have no reason to interpret "to use" as an independent verb.

If, on the other hand, we had:

Betty Crocker's collection of cake mixes makes easy baking recipes

... and if the intent was "makes easy-baking recipes," that is "makes recipes that are easy to bake," there's a danger that instead I'll come across "makes easy" and parse it as its own phrase, and "baking" as a verb, and interpret the sentence as "makes the act of baking recipes easy."

So in the short, easy clause you present, I wouldn't say that hyphenation is a "must," though they would not be unwelcome. It might depend especially on the context: if this is a tagline for a company ("KitchenAid. Easy to use kitchen tools to simplify your workload."), then I might even eschew the hyphens for design purposes, if they looked clunky in the ad.

Andy Bonner
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  • Thank you very much for the answer. I thought of placing these on the product packaging and the business card. So the consequences might be it would be viewed as not professional if the grammar is wrong. I think I'll better be adding them then. – Pedro Mar 15 '22 at 16:36