Three-word compound adjectives that look awful

Question

One English rule is to hyphenate two or more words when they come before a noun they modify and act as a single idea, called a compound adjective. This is the most common use of the hyphen I've seen. For example:

A non-cloud platform
Some cloud-based platforms

What happens when there are three adjectives before a noun? Should I hyphenate all three? This example looks awful, but maybe that's because it's joining two compound adjectives that we usually see by themselves:

Non-cloud-based platform

That compound adjective would look better without the two hyphens.

For most groups of three or more hyphenated words, they tend to form expressions that behave like compound adjectives, e.g. up-to-date, hit-or-miss, trial-and-error, etc. but they would also look alright as phrases by themselves. The three-word compound adjective in my example doesn't fall into that category.

I’m voting to close this question because it seems to be more about aesthetics than grammar. — Greybeard, Oct 13 '23 at 12:30
Does this answer your question? How do I hyphenate an open-form compound word with another that should be hyphenated? — livresque, Oct 13 '23 at 13:23

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 13 '23 at 12:37

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Grammarly suggests that in this case, as well as when one of the adjectives in the compound is multiple non-hyphenated words, you should use an en dash to separate the two 'highest-level' halves, like this:

non–cloud-based platform.

This was mentioned in a related question here, but a comment indicates that the "tyranny of the typewriter", among other misfortunes, has precluded its widespread adoption.

answered Oct 13 '23 at 12:37

elutionary

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Please vote to close duplicates rather than answering them. – Edwin Ashworth Oct 13 '23 at 16:14

Three-word compound adjectives that look awful

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