daylight-saving time. daylight saving time

Merriam-Webster says “daylight saving time.”

The Wall Street Journal says “daylight-saving time.”

I think the Journal is right.

Do Hyphens Matter?

Why the Wall Street Journal Embraces the Compound Hyphen

As readers of Sprachgefuhl know, I favor the compound hyphen. It turns out that I’m not alone. The great Paul R. Martin, a longtime editor at the Wall Street Journal who served as the paper’s final authority on language, was also a big fan. Here’s how William Safire, who wrote the “On Language” column in the New York Times Magazine, described Martin’s meticulousness:

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“Who is it in the press that calls on me?” asks Julius Caesar in the second scene of the first act of Shakespeare’s play.

It is Paul R. Martin, assistant managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, known to his colleagues as the Great Hyphenator. He commends me for defending the use of the hyphen in kitchen-table issue “as befits a compound adjective modifying the noun issue,” but then takes me to task for using health care reform with the compound adjective health care naked of hyphenation.

All Americans deserve health care, but does all adjectival health care deserve a hyphen? Usagists disagree.

Mr. Martin does a sprightly flier on usage for the Journal, called Style & Substance, along the lines of the occasional Winners & Sinners that used to be put out by usageers at the New York Times. (I’m just trying out usageer, as an alternative to usagist; it has a three-musketeers quality, and usage diktats take courage and loyalty to a tight little band.)

In it, he asks us which of the following compound-modifier constructions (thereby using compound-modifier as a compound modifier for the first time in the history of grammar) should be hyphenated.

Mr. Martin’s brain-teasing list: “mutual fund manager; hard line faction; health care program [we know that one]; fast food chain; drug price increases; credit card operations; page one article; variable annuity buyers; tax deferred annuities [you can tell what paper he works for]; real estate agent; high school student; natural gas pipeline.”

His answer: “All of the above.”

He’s a hyphenation purist; I’m not. With health care reform, I’ll go along with New York Times style that calls for no hyphens, as in sales tax bill, when the meaning is clear without them. I disagree with the tendency of many Times editors to forgo the hyphen whenever nouns are used together as a compound modifier. Use no hyphen in health care reform, but because it adds to clarity, put a hyphen in kitchen-table issue. A hyphen is a tool. We own the tools; the tools don’t own us.

But what about Mr. Martin’s title, assistant managing editor? Should that have a hyphen? He says no: “I assist the managing editor; I don’t assistant-manage the editor.”

Why You Should Use a Hyphen: “The Millisecond of Ambiguity”

Wise counsel from Bill Walsh, author of Yes, I Could Care Less: How to Be a Language Snob Without Being a Jerk:

To me, hyphens are to writing what turn signals are to driving: helpful, unobtrusive and far too often considered optional. Many in the odd-editor community disagree. Taking to heart the rationale that hyphens are used to avoid ambiguity, they are forever searching for reasons to declare certain modifiers or sorts of modifiers unambiguous and thus exempt from hyphenation.

So you have to ask yourself: What do you do when confronted with something like Doctor helps car crash victims?

Do you hyphenate all instances for consistency in this story but approach other stories case by case? Or do you just recognize that it’s a good idea to hyphenate compound modifiers and avoid all that torture?

More alarming to me was Time’s cover story about “The Only Child Myth.” What the editors meant, of course, was the only-child myth. I fear that someone on the “creative” side thought a hyphen would be all ugly and cluttery.

I’m the kind of person who uses a turn signal before changing lanes even when nobody’s watching. Just as you can’t predict when a car is going to materialize out of nowhere, you can’t necessarily predict how your copy is going to be read.

The millisecond of ambiguity is the rationale behind my policy of strictly hyphenating compound modifiers. If I simply wrote white truffle purveyors, you would briefly wonder whether the purveyors were white, and you’d have to backtrack and mentally insert the hyphen that applies the whiteness to the truffles.

Addendum (5/17/2022): A recent article in the New Yorker adds this:

“The New Yorker ... uses all the hyphens all the time, to avoid ambiguity, whether ambiguity is present or not. For instance, a high-school student might enjoy a chocolate-chocolate-mint-chip-ice-cream sundae. The founders relied heavily on Fowler’s Modern English Usage, and Fowler liked hyphens.”

Addendum (7/23/2024): The Wall Street Journal points out an exception:

“Large language models” does not get a hyphen. Why? Because “these are language models of large size, not models that are focusing on large language.”

Addendum (11/28/2024): How do you hyphenate a phrase that uses quotation marks? The Wall Street Journal provides guidance:

Incorrect:
“blue-wall” states

Correct:
“blue wall” states

The Journal explains that “the quote marks take care of keeping the adjective phrase together.”

When Should You Use a Hyphen?

Wise counsel from Richard Lauchman, author of Punctuation at Work: Simple Principles for Achieving Clarity and Good Style:

Say you come across the following sentence:

“The study should yield more conclusive results.”

Does this sentence mean that additional conclusive results are required, or that results that are more conclusive are required?

In the latter instance, meaning requires more-conclusive results.

As in cases of this sort, it’s better to use a hyphen than to omit one just because the rules say it shouldn't be there. Here are three guidelines to consider when hyphenating:

1. Break the Rule When Doing So Helps Your Reader
Nearly all authorities say you shouldn’t hyphenate compound adjectives when the first word is comparative or superlatives: “most favored nation” or “less developed countries.”

Break this rule when your meaning requires it. In the sentence below, taken from the New York Times, notice how lower-ranking is handled:

“The only other figure from the Bush White House to have been convicted of a serious crime is Donald McGonegal, a lower-ranking official who has been sentenced to 18 months in connection with the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.”

Even though readers would probably get this meaning, the hyphen enables them to get it a little more quickly.

2. Know Your Audience
Phrases like spread spectrum analysis and frequency hopping system require no hyphen at FCC because they have become terms of art among communications engineers. If, however, you’re writing to a nonexpert audience, then you’re encouraged to hyphenate spread-spectrum and frequency-hopping.

3. Value Clarity Above All Else
It’s better to use a hyphen when the rules say you shouldn’t than to omit one when the reader needs it. Your readers don’t care about the rules of hyphenation. They care about clarity. I encourage you to hyphenate whenever doing so helps prevent ambiguity or facilitates understanding.

The compound adjectives below all begin with superlatives (which by rule aren’t supposed to require a hyphen), but the reader benefits when you hyphenate because he sees your intention a little more quickly. That is what we want.

•   the best-case scenario
•   the best-kept secret
•   the least-recognized fact
•   the worst-conceived plan
•   the least-annoying error
•   the weirdest-rule award