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) _______________________________________________