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 [email protected] | 650.430.8674 On 8/20/20, 12:17 PM, "Framers on behalf of Lynne A. Price" <[email protected] on behalf of [email protected]> 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 [email protected] http://www.txstruct.com voice/fax: (510) 583-1505 cell phone: (510) 421-2284 _______________________________________________ This message is from the Framers mailing list Send messages to [email protected] Visit the list's homepage at http://www.frameusers.com Archives located at http://www.mail-archive.com/framers%40lists.frameusers.com/ Subscribe and unsubscribe at http://lists.frameusers.com/listinfo.cgi/framers-frameusers.com Send administrative questions to [email protected] _______________________________________________ This message is from the Framers mailing list Send messages to [email protected] Visit the list's homepage at http://www.frameusers.com Archives located at http://www.mail-archive.com/framers%40lists.frameusers.com/ Subscribe and unsubscribe at http://lists.frameusers.com/listinfo.cgi/framers-frameusers.com Send administrative questions to [email protected]
