General Forum
Start a New Topic 
Author
Comment
View Entire Thread
Re: FULLY ENCLOSED VS FULLY-ENCLOSED

Many thanks Paul.

Stu.

Re: FULLY ENCLOSED VS FULLY-ENCLOSED

Hello Paul,

So, would this be acceptable?

At the time of its construction, Runcorn Shopping City was the largest fully enclosed shopping centre in Europe.

Stu.

Re: FULLY ENCLOSED VS FULLY-ENCLOSED

Hi Stu


Yes, that's fine. I know it's tempting to hyphenate all verb-based compound adjectives, but I don't think it's necessary here. However, some people do hyphenate it as "fully-enclosed" (as the corpus I checked shows) and the sky didn't fall!

Where a hyphen is undoubtedly required, though, is for disambiguation purposes. For example, if I wanted to say that Ed is a reporter and that he has travelled a lot, I have two choices:

(1) Ed is a well-travelled reporter.
(2) Ed is a well travelled reporter.

In (1) the hyphen serves to indicate that Ed has travelled and that he has done so extensively; there's no doubt as to what is meant - it's just one adjective describing Ed. By contrast, the omission of the hyphen in (2) might give rise to the wrong interpretation since it could be understood to mean that Ed is both well and that he has travelled, thus two adjectives describing Ed. That's what we mean by employing a hyphen to avoid ambiguity.

But in your example, the omission of a hyphen in "fully enclosed" causes no such ambiguity. Though there may very well be "an enclosed shopping centre", there could hardly be a "fully shopping centre", could there?




PaulM

Re: FULLY ENCLOSED VS FULLY-ENCLOSED

Hello Paul,

Yes, I understand you completely now. It makes one wonder why this hyphen is still used at all now that you have explained what function it serves. As you said, I suppose it is just habit to join these terms together. They just seem disconnected without the hyphen.


Thanks again,

Stu.

Re: FULLY ENCLOSED VS FULLY-ENCLOSED

The adverb very and adverbs ending in -ly are not hyphenated in US English when followed by an adjective, participle, etc.

Incorrect: the very-elegant watch.
The watch was very elegant. (OK)
The very elegant watch was a knock-off. (OK)

Incorrect: the finely-tuned watch.
The finely tuned watch. (OK)
The watch is finely tuned. (OK)