At  8:52 AM 10/17/97 -0400, Brenda S. Campbell wrote:
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>Sender:       Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>              <[log in to unmask]>
>Poster:       "Brenda S. Campbell" <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject:      Hyphens and compound adjectives
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>I had a doozy of a fight with my English professor last night.
>
>I wrote a paragraph about increased employee benefits in a company.
>Here's a snip:
>
>"We have increased retirement-plan contributions and life-insurance
>benefits.  We anticipate that these increases will improve our competitive
>standing and help us to weather the current industry-wide slump."
>
>Professor X agreed with the use of the hyphen in "industry-wide" but not
>in the other two instances.  His argument is that "retirement plan" doesn't
>actually modify "contributions" but that the construction becomes
>"something bigger" -- some kind of larger grammatical entity in itself.
>Same with "life insurance."
>
>In all the sources I checked, the only no-no I found to using a hyphen
>with a compound adjective is if each adjective can individually modify the
>noun.  But, while "retirement contributions" and "plan contributions" both
>make sense, I argue that "retirement-plan contributions" has a different
>meaning than either of the two used alone.
>
>Am I splitting hairs?  I'm curious to hear opinions, because I can seem to
>find vindication of neither Professor X's argument nor mine published
>anywhere.
>
>Thanks.
>_______________________________________________
>Brenda S. Campbell
>Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, P.C.
>600 Atlantic Ave.
>Boston, MA 02210
>(617) 720-3500 (voice)  (617) 720-2441 (fax)
>_______________________________________________
 
Brenda:
I think you'll find vindication of the Professor's argument in the Chicago
Manual of Style.  Because neither "retirement plan contribution" nor "life
insurance benefits" would cause the reader to hesitate, those two don't
need the hyphen.  The example the Manual gives is "a fast-sailing
ship"--that needs one; so does"free-form sculpture" because both could
cause a moment of hesitation.  However, the explicit rules for hyphenating
compounds in prenoun position generally deal only with participles modified
by adverbs:  long-lived, highly developed (the ly adverbs are not
hyphenated).  They also list object + participle (decision-making),
compounds with such words as well, high, cross, all, and half (well-known
man, high-level job, half-baked plan, cross-town expressway).  But the
kinds of noun + noun combinations in your example would not be hypenated
unless they have potential for being misunderstood.
 
I recommend a Chicago Manual for every office!
 
Martha Kolln
Penn State U. (retired)