>
> At 08:52 AM 10/17/97 -0400, Brenda S. Campbell wrote:
> >I had a doozy of a fight with my English professor last night.
>
Wendell Ricketts replied:
 
>Dear Brenda:
>
> You're right; he's wrong. I fight with my students constantly about
> hyphenation of compound adjectives  (and with the clients whom I serve as a
> freelance editor), but the rule is the rule. The one source I can reliably
> use when I need to say "SEE!" is *The New Yorker,* perhaps the last bastion
> of the firm rule of always hyphenating those compounds. (Imagine the
> struggles I had working once for a non-profit law firm when I wanted to
> hyphenate "sexual-harassment suit."
 
Oops, Wendell.  I didn't think Brenda was asking about the
hyphenation of "compound adjectives," as you say above.  She
definitely gave examples of compound nominals.  (Still,
"sexual-harassment suit"--you're not putting us on, are you?)
 
Flipping open at random to one of the professional journals on
my shelf, I didn't take long to find a sentence like the following:
"Its proponents assert that second language acquisition research can
and should guide second language instruction."  (TESOL Quarterly
27.2: 196).
 
This kind of compound nominalization without hyphenation is widely
accepted in professional writing.   The fact that the "New Yorker"
is possibly the last bastion of this kind of compulsive hyphenization
seems to indicate that Brenda's professor knows best.   Martha
Kolln's citation of the principle in the MLA Handbook provides  a
sensible rationale for hyphenation in compound nominals.
 
 
 
 
**********************************************************************
R. Michael Medley       VPH 211                Ph: (712) 737-7047
Assistant Professor     Northwestern College
Department of English   Orange City, IA  51041
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