In Nouns^x, Hyphens^x, Constructions^x

Yes, Mr. M. It helps a lot. It kind of engendered some inquiries, though. 1. In your interview in the English-test.net website, you said: From there, it didn't take much thought to realize that I could eliminate the middle man and start my own school, lucrative enough to make Japan a...

Hi, When we hyphenate the adjectives, the usual reasoning given is that it is done to prevent people from thinking the adjectives modify the noun individually when the adjectives hyphenated should be considered as one word. Fine, but how a person can get confused when taken individually, a...

I'm afraid you are seeing it the wrong way. The hyphen doesn't extend to the following noun. I can see what you mean though. Sometimes hyphens can lead to some ambiguitiy but I think this tends to happen more when we have hyphenated adjectives followed by nouns, than hyphenation of noun-noun....

Dear teachers, Is it true that the construction "materially-progressive heaven" is incorrect in English ? First because if we use a hyphen to make a compound modifier both words should modify the noun that follows, which is not the case here since “heaven” can’t be modified by the word...

1. Lucky Strike, an old American cigarettes brand, is a classic brand. Should we say "cigarettes brand" or "cigarette brand"? Whichever your choice, can you exlplain why? I'd put "cigarette" in the singular because bulk goods are generally expressed as a collective singular. 2....

Hi people! I'm quite confused about the form the first element in a compound noun should take. At first, I also confused possession with this issue, though now it seems a whole lot clearer! I'd appreciate it if you could have a look at these sentences (which were written by one of my...

1. "Worse" is the comparative of "bad" while "worst" is the superlative. bad-worse-the worst His new movie is worse than his last. Your cooking is getting worse! (compared to before) Among his movies, the newest one is the worst. This is the worst of all! 2. I'm reproducing...

There have been a number of recent questions concerning when to use hypens. The following is an excerpt from The Economist magazine's style guide. © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2004 Use hyphens for: 1. FRACTIONS (whether nouns or adjectives): two-thirds, four-fifths, one-sixth,...