low risk rating VS low-risk rating

Question

As I understand what is happening:

First, we have a rating.
Second, we modify it with an adjective, calling it a risk rating.
Third, we modify the adjective with another adjective, which is why we hyphenate it, resulting in a low-risk rating.

But, is it ok to not hyphenate it and call it a low risk rating.

My feeling is that you'd call it a low-risk whatever when you have varied descriptors such as: low-risk, low-interest, high-volatility; but when you are only talking about risk ratings, you'd leave out the hyphen. "Our optimal risk rating is a low risk rating." Because, now, the noun has become the risk rating as opposed to the rating. (I mean, cripes, should I hyphenate risk-rating?? So many bleeding hyphens!!!)

(I'm asking because Microsoft Word is giving me a bunch of hyphen suggestions and it's annoying the feck out of me.)

The main reason to hyphenate is clarity: You don't want the reader to read "Low (risk rating)," like me on a balmy day of rating risks. — Yosef Baskin, Feb 16 '24 at 22:02
@YosefBaskin But that's exactly how it's intended be read. A risk rating is a number, like 75% possibility of failure. A low value of this might be 10%. — Barmar, Feb 16 '24 at 22:47
Does this answer your question? When should compound words be written as one word, with hyphens, or with spaces? Or hyphenation of compounds with terms made of two words? A low risk rating defaults to a risk rating that is low; a low-risk rating is a rating of low risks. — Edwin Ashworth, Feb 16 '24 at 23:40
@EdwinAshworth Or a rating that has low risk. Neither of them makes much sense to me. — Barmar, Feb 17 '24 at 00:17

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 17 '24 at 05:30

2

See Compound modifier (Wikipedia). The general rule is that the hyphen should connect the pair of words which are more closely associated, so it's wrong in this case - we're not describing a rating that is low risk (compare "low-risk experiment", where the hyphen is appropriate), we're describing a risk rating that is low.

You could write low risk-rating, but that might come off as old-fashioned. Omitting the hyphen altogether is probably the better solution.

edited Feb 17 '24 at 05:30

KillingTime

6,206

answered Feb 16 '24 at 22:19

Tevildo

1,193

Thanks. This is how I was thinking about it too, I just wanted to confirm it wasn't wrong to leave out the hyphen. – samgled Feb 17 '24 at 01:51

low risk rating VS low-risk rating

1 Answers1