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)
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