Hi,
I have two phrases below and wish you would answer some questions.
1. uses as a "getting to know each other" game/activity
How do we know when do hypenate the phrase in quotation marks or just write them out as a person has done obviously above?
The purpose of hyphens would be to show that these words are all related. The quotation marks already do that, so there is no further need to add hyphens.
Wrriting it without quotes as uses as a getting-to-know-each-other" game/activity seems like a very awkward and clumsy approach. I'd suggest rewording to something like uses as a game/activity for getting to know each other.
How do we decide when to capitalize the first word or letter of the phrase in quotation marks? A general guideline would be to capitalize if the words being quoted themselves originally had a capital letter. eg If it is the start of a quoted sentence. Or a proper name, of course.
2. a question accompanied by a follow up "why?" for reasons
Is it OK to use a pronoun in quotation marks as a noun? It's OK by me. It would get a bit irritating if you did it a lot. It would make the reader's job a bit more difficult. Can you give me some simple instances where this kind of thing is used? eg We often refer to a ship as 'she'. eg hat part of speech is 'it'.
Can a noun in quotation marks be preceded by some adjectives and an article? Yes. eg Mary called Tom a selfish, stupid 'moron'. The quotes suggest that only the word 'moron' is a direct quote from Mary's mouth. The adjectives may be the reporter's parphrase.
Best wishes, Clive
Best wishes, Clive