[Framers] Grammar, now with hyphens!

[Tori Muir]

I second Lynne's advice!  One additional point: if listing multiple items that have compound adjectives with the same noun being modified, it's customary to use the noun only on the last one. E.g.: 

The shop sells 2-, 4- and 10-gear bikes

Tori Muir
tmuir at spot-on-creative.com | 650.430.8674
 

On 8/20/20, 12:17 PM, "Framers on behalf of Lynne A. Price" <framers-bounces+tmuir=spot-on-creative.com at lists.frameusers.com on behalf of lprice at txstruct.com> wrote:

    Doug,
        Your examples show compound adjectives that modify "bike". Most of 
    them should be hyphenated. The exception is "multi-gear". "Multi" is a 
    prefix rather than a word by itself so "multigear" does not require a 
    hyphen.
        You didn't ask, but as far as spelling out the number of gears as 
    opposed to using Arabic numerals, I would probably use the words rather 
    than numerals, depending on context. If you are writing something like a 
    catalog for a bicycle shop or the assembly directions for a new bicycle, 
    I would probably follow existing conventions (such as the previous 
    version of the catalog). If different manufacturers use different 
    conventions, I'd probably use each manufacturer's names. If company A 
    sells a 12-gear bike and company B sells a twelve-gear bike, a purchaser 
    may have trouble finding information on each unless a store's catalog 
    identifies each product the way its manufacturer does.
         --Lynne
    
    On 8/20/2020 11:39 AM, Doug wrote:
    > I've seen these used both ways, so I'd like some fresh input:  which of the
    > following are correct, and why?
    >
    > single gear bike
    > four gear bike
    > ten gear bike
    > 12-gear bike
    > 20-gear bike
    > multi-gear bike
    > fixed gear bike
    
    
    -- 
    Lynne A. Price
    Text Structure Consulting, Inc.
    Specializing in structured FrameMaker consulting, application development, and training
    lprice at txstruct.com            http://www.txstruct.com
    voice/fax: (510) 583-1505      cell phone: (510) 421-2284
    
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