hyphens

Only use figures for terse, informal or abbreviated writing such as notes. Hyphenate ages when they are adjective phrases involving a unit of measurement. So: a five-year-old child.

Many thanks. Contrex.

You are correct to say that hyphens are often dropped as in your second sentence. It could be either carelessness or style preference I suppose. I personally prefer the hyphenated form.

I feel that since adjective phrases of the type being discussed use the singular form of the measurement unit, they would look odd without the hyphens

A five-foot-long snake (A snake that is five feet long)

A fifty-pound-weight sack of coal (A sack of coal weighing fifty pounds)

A fifteen-mile-per-hour cycling speed limit (A cycling speed limit of fifteen miles per hour)

Hi Contrex

Thanks for your guidance.

a one-month old baby (Some people, out of ignorance, leave out the second hyphen. This makes it appear that the baby is old when it is only one month in age.)

Best wishes

Good point.

Your English, thanks to your long-standing task-orientated never-say-die nose-to-the-grindstone approach, seems to be much better now, YL.



...........

Hey do you guys say oriented or orientated? They seem nowadays to be thought of as synonymous, but I favour the latter.

Hi Mc Tag

Thanks for the kind words. I've not only you to thank but Contrex and Mame and some other members whose names I cannot remember because of my poor memory.

I'm a perfectionist and will strive to improve every day, bit by bit.

BTW, I've never heard of 'long-standing task-orientated never-say-die nose-to-the-grindstone approach'. I've learned a new expression from you. Thanks again.

According to the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, 'oriented' and 'orientated' are synonyms.

Best wishes

I say "oriented".

Methinks McTag was being humorously prolix!



Me too. Both orient and orientate come from the same French verb, orienter, but were introduced at different times, the shorter one in the eighteenth century and the longer in the middle of the nineteenth. Robert Burchfield, in the Third Edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage, says "One can have no fundamental quarrel with anyone who decides to use the longer of the two words". This is a British view, since there orientated is common; in the US it is less so and considered much less a part of the standard language. One might think that odd, since BrE "transport" and "import" are shorter than the AmE "transportation" and "importation"

It's just an extra syllable which serves no useful purpose

Contrex wrote: One might think that odd, since BrE "transport" and "import" are shorter than the AmE "transportation" and "importation"

I agree.

In AmE, words like 'color' and 'honor' have their u's removed.
However, sometimes, in AmE the longer version is the correct spelling. It seems they prefer to differ from the British.