The checker is not wrong so much as naïve about measurements. It is conventional to hyphenate compound adjectives where the first part is a cardinal number: for example, ³two-headed chicken.²
I have found grammar checkers make many bad suggestions and flag things that are not wrong, so I keep mine off. You may be able to turn off punctuation checking in your preferences, which is a tradeoff. Or you can complain to the software publisher. Good luck! From: Jim Elwell <jim.elw...@qsicorp.com> Reply-To: <jim.elw...@qsicorp.com> Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2009 09:47:49 -0600 (MDT) To: "U.S. Metric Association" <usma@colostate.edu> Subject: [USMA:45538] Metric Style Question My grammar checker keeps trying to get me to hyphenate a metric unit of measure when used as an adjective (apparently seeing the number and the unit as a compound adjective). I wrote: "put all those resources into a 180 mm industrial panel-mount unit" And it suggests "put all those resources into a 180-mm industrial panel-mount unit" I thought I was quite familiar with metric style, but I am not sure about this one. Can anyone shed some light on it? Thanks! Jim -- ********************** Jim Elwell jim.elw...@qsicorp.com 801-466-8770 www.qsicorp.com
