http://tc.eserver.org/authors/Tadfor,_Tom_Little A bibliography of works by Tadfor, Tom Little in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Tadfor,_Tom_Little http://tc.eserver.org/10815.html http://tc.eserver.org/10815.html I want to discuss one particular aspect of Chicago's hyphenation advice, which seems questionable at the outset and is so often abused in practice that I think it needs a good thrashing. This is the notion that a compound adjective should be hyphenated when it immediately precedes a noun, and left open when it follows the noun, for example in the predicate. Chicago's example is fast sailing ship, which is ambiguous because it might mean a sailing ship that is fast or a ship that is sailing fast. Hence, to resolve the ambiguity, you hyphenate fast-sailing if you mean to say it is a ship that is sailing fast. But the hyphen is not necessary except when the phrase immediately precedes ship, because the phrase is not ambiguous elsewhere.