Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/293
A language...not yet fetlocked by dictionary and grammar mongers.–Lowell.
Those who take human or womankind for their study.–Thackeray.
The single phrases would have the hyphen for different reasons (moss-covered, &c.), all but human kind. The only quite satisfactory plan is the Germans', who would write moss- and ivy-covered. This is imitated in English, as:
In old woods and on fern- and gorse-covered hilltops they do no harm whatever.–Spectator.
Refreshment-, boarding-, and lodging-house keepers have suffered severely too.–Westminster Gazette.
But imitations of foreign methods are not much to be recommended; failing that, Lowell's method seems the best—to use no hyphens, and keep the second compound separate.
Adverbs that practically form compounds with verbs, but stand after, and not necessarily next after them, need not be hyphened unless they would be anbiguous in the particular sentence if they were not hyphened. This may often happen, since most of them are also prepositions; but even then, it is better to rearrange the sentence than to hyphen.
He gratefully hands-over the establishment to his country.–Meredith.
Thoughtful persons, unpledged to shore-up tottering dogmas.–Huxley.
It is a much commoner fault to over-hyphen than to under-hyphen. But in the next example malaria-infected must be written, by 3. And in the next again, one of the differentiations we have spoken of is disregarded; the fifty first means the fifty that come first: the fifty-first is the one after fifty. The ambiguity in the third example is obvious.
The demonstration that a malaria infected mosquito, transported a great distance to a non-malarial country, can...–Times.
'Nothing serious, I hope? How do cars break down?' 'In fifty different ways. Only mine has chosen the fifty first.'–Kipling.
The Cockney knew what the Lord of Session knew not, that the British public is gentility crazy.–Borrow.
There comes a time when compound words that have long had a hyphen should drop it; this is when they have become