It does not matter if a student lives __ as ...
I'm writing a formal report. Which of the following should I use to fill in the blank? Which one is correct and more formal and looks/sounds better?
a. "on- or off-campus"
b. "on or off campus"
c. "on-campus or off-campus"
Additional question: Is a. even grammatically correct?
What Noah said is correct, here is why:
A hyphen is used to join two or more words to form a single adjective before a noun: On-campus library
If the compound modifiers come after a noun, they are not hyphenated: The library is on campus
The Purdue Online Writing Lab was my source for this explanation: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/576/01/
No need for hyphens or anything of the like.
It doesn't matter if a student lives on or off campus...
Or
It doesn't matter if a student lives on campus or off campus...
On a side note, it should be lives not live.
