# Year old vs. year-old. That pesky hyphen. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 8, 2015, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/year-old-vs-year-old-that-pesky-hyphen/727318 "2015-08-08T14:22:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2015, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/year-old-vs-year-old-that-pesky-hyphen/727318/1 "2015-08-08T14:22:37Z")
I think I know (I hope) the rule of using the hyphen when describing how old someone is. If the noun follows “years old”, it’s hyphenated. If not, it’s not. That is a 25-year-old Marine. That Marine is 25 years old. What is the logic in this? What about other usage. As in an adjective preceding a noun needing a hyphen, like blue-gray coat. The coat was blue gray. I’ve never really got a handle on the fine points of the hyphen. When is it required? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2015, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/year-old-vs-year-old-that-pesky-hyphen/727318/2 "2015-08-08T14:38:35Z")
Theodore Bernstein’s [The Careful Writer](https://books.google.com/books?id=qYd35MUlSm4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+careful+writer+bernstein&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAGoVChMI8N6EztmZxwIVwuKACh3wPwHD#v=onepage&q=hyphen&f=false) has a good explanation of hyphen use on pp 366-367. [Punctuation Made Simple](http://punctuationmadesimple.com/PMSHyphen.html) has a long list of rules and exceptions. It’s those exceptions that confound hyphen use. Bernstein gives examples of why the language makes it hard to avoid them. The particular usage for year old is called an adverbial hyphen. If you search on that you’ll get a lot of helpful hits explaining hyphens in various ways, so one might work better for you than others. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2015, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/year-old-vs-year-old-that-pesky-hyphen/727318/3 "2015-08-08T14:39:03Z")
Your examples looked right to me. Also, if you said the 25-year-old, you’d hyphenate that. (The 25 year old is wrong.) The hyphen before a noun can be up for debate and often depends on the style of a particular publication. Often, people will leave out a hyphen if they feel you can parse the sentence without it. This can be subjective, so some places might say “picture-book biography,” but others won’t. But as you pointed out, when it’s before a noun, you hyphenate. “Well-written book” but “the book was well written.” Also, “well written, the book…” Also, you never hyphenate with an adverb ending in -ly. So you don’t say, “the beautifully-written book.” I’m not sure what the logic is behind this rule (there isn’t always one), though I could probably find you support for what I’m saying in the Chicago Manual of Style. (Though again, they don’t really explain why rules are the way they are.) ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2015, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/year-old-vs-year-old-that-pesky-hyphen/727318/4 "2015-08-08T14:43:47Z")
How would it be without the numbers, such as: That is a year old child. or That is a year-old child. ? ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2015, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/year-old-vs-year-old-that-pesky-hyphen/727318/5 "2015-08-08T14:47:55Z")
> [@Morgenstern](#): > > I think I know (I hope) the rule of using the hyphen when describing how old someone is. If the noun follows “years old”, it’s hyphenated. If not, it’s not. > > That is a 25-year-old Marine. > That Marine is 25 years old. > > What is the logic in this? “25-year-old” is an example of a [phrasal adjective](http://grammarist.com/grammar/phrasal-adjectives/). If it helps make it more logical to you, think of the potential for confusion in writing something like “a 25 year old Marine” without the hyphens. My eye focuses on “old Marine” and I have to think about whether we’re talking about an old Marine. “25-year old Marine” would be even worse—is that someone who’s been an old Marine for 25 years? > [@](#): > > What about other usage. As in an adjective preceding a noun needing a hyphen, like blue-gray coat. > The coat was blue gray. If I remember my childhood Crayolas correctly, certain color names are hyphenated (red-orange, blue-green, etc.). So if you’re referring to one of those colors, you always spell it with a hyphen. ---
**Author:** ![Flyer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/flyer/32/7298_2.png) [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2015, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/year-old-vs-year-old-that-pesky-hyphen/727318/6 "2015-08-08T14:56:59Z")
This sort of thing is one reason why I contend that of all the major languages, English is second only to Chinese in terms of difficulty to learn. A story I remember from _Reader’s Digest_– A foreign student gave up in disgust when he saw this headline–“Church Bazaar Pronounced Success.” 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2015, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/year-old-vs-year-old-that-pesky-hyphen/727318/7 "2015-08-08T14:59:17Z")
The basic idea is that the hyphen makes it clear that the words within the hyphenated set are to be combined into one idea. That idea is then to be used as a whole to modify the noun. Here are some examples from the “Punctuation Made Simple” link that Exapno Mapcase gave: open-mouthed kiss ill-tempered dog well-kept secret brown-eyed girl well-known poet best-loved songs ill-advised rescue so-called test high-quality jewelry low-cost housing twenty-year-old man hundred-dollar gift rust-resistant metal all-American athlete ever-blooming roses real-life experience much-loved coach better-looking car best-running motor over-the-counter drug In each case, it’s being made clear that in a phrase A-B C, the words A and B are being combined into a single idea and this combined idea is modifying the noun C. Otherwise, it might be possible to think that A is modifying C by itself and B is modifying C by itself. That’s what happens in such phrases as “a big red balloon” or “a happy young woman”, for instance. The same is true for a phrase A-B-C D, where the words A, B, and C are combined into a single idea and this combined idea is used to modify the noun D. ---
**Author:** ![Ponderoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponderoid/32/19221_2.png) [@Ponderoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponderoid)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2015, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/year-old-vs-year-old-that-pesky-hyphen/727318/8 "2015-08-08T15:35:12Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > How would it be without the numbers, such as: > > That is a year old child. or That is a year-old child. > ? The latter. It’s just like “a one-year-old child” with the one being implied. > [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > Also, you never hyphenate with an adverb ending in -ly. So you don’t say, “the beautifully-written book.” > > I’m not sure what the logic is behind this rule (there isn’t always one), When used with an adjective, adverbs are understood to be modifying that adjective, so the logic is that you don’t need to hyphenate adverbs period, regardless of whether they end in -ly. ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2015, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/year-old-vs-year-old-that-pesky-hyphen/727318/9 "2015-08-08T18:22:53Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > … > [Punctuation Made Simple](http://punctuationmadesimple.com/PMSHyphen.html) has a long list of rules and exceptions. > > … Thank you. It’s rules like this (from your linked source) that get me every time. - Exception 1: If doing so would double A’s or I’s (but not O’s, or E’s) - ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2015, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/year-old-vs-year-old-that-pesky-hyphen/727318/10 "2015-08-08T18:45:56Z")
Unless you’re writing in _The New Yorker_, where you’re suppose to spell “cooperate” as “coöperate”. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2015, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/year-old-vs-year-old-that-pesky-hyphen/727318/11 "2015-08-08T22:11:12Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Unless you’re writing in _The New Yorker_, where you’re suppose to spell “cooperate” as “coöperate”. And remember that the mark over the second “o” is a [diaeresis](http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis), not an umlaut. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2015, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/year-old-vs-year-old-that-pesky-hyphen/727318/12 "2015-08-08T22:17:31Z")
> [@Ponderoid](#): > > When used with an adjective, adverbs are understood to be modifying that adjective, so the logic is that you don’t need to hyphenate adverbs period, regardless of whether they end in -ly. With many of the phrases listed by **Wendell Wagner** above, the first term is a word that gets categorized as an adverb (e.g., well-known poet, etc.) So we write _well-known poet_, but _widely known poet_. If there’s any “logic,” it’s almost as if the _-ly_ of the adverb (when followed by an “adjectve”), simply by custom “implies” the hyphen. Traditional high school English teachers obsess about identifying parts of speech, as though that were the single key to the language or something, but often in English stress and syntax ultimately determine the functions of words, which don’t always inherently embody a particular part of speech. When we say something like:\*That young man has a devil-may-care attitude \*the modifier of _attitude_ isn’t comprised of a single adjective, but we have no problem understanding that the three words together work as single chunk, and become an “adjective”–_ **whether we hear the expression or read it with hyphens** _. The hyphens, in part, are a way to reflect that manner of pronunciation in print. Nouns and verbs in English can function as adverbs (or combining form constituents of adjectives) simply by their placement (and stress). ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2015, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/year-old-vs-year-old-that-pesky-hyphen/727318/13 "2015-08-08T22:50:17Z")
Hyphens often indicate 2 words in transition into 1 word, as living languages evolve. For example, working on Distributed Proofreading with books from the 1700’s and 1800’s, I was surprised to see the words to-day and to-morrow. And that they were not OCR errors, but the way those words were spelled at the time. they went from 2 separate words (“to day”) to 2 hyphenated words (“to-day”) to a single word (“today”). That is a common progression for words, as the combined term becomes more common. Some current examples: I use email in my writing, but my spellchecker objects to that – it says that should be hyphenated as e-mail. That’s a term in transition, and I think the merged word email is winning and becoming the default version. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/year-old-vs-year-old-that-pesky-hyphen/727318/14 "2015-08-09T02:16:08Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > For example, working on Distributed Proofreading with books from the 1700’s and 1800’s, I was surprised to see the words to-day and to-morrow. And that they were not OCR errors, but the way those words were spelled at the time. they went from 2 separate words (“to day”) to 2 hyphenated words (“to-day”) to a single word (“today”). I’ve found that to be the usage [well into the 20th century](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=today%2Cto-day&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ctoday%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cto%20-%20day%3B%2Cc0), especially in Britain.