Sunday, December 6, 2015

open vs closed vs hyphenated - Hyphenating "Pulitzer Prize winning" as adjective



I'm looking for authority on hyphenating the following phrase with a compound modifier. Which is correct?




She was a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, or
She was a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, or
She was a Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter



The Chicago Manual of Style 17th ed. at sections 5.92 and 5.93 covers some of this topic, but doesn't seem conclusive on this particular case.


Answer



The usual way of doing this is with an en dash, which can be used like a hyphen to join terms when they comprise multiple words (or, less commonly, an already hyphenated term):




  • Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter



  • pre–Civil War era


  • ex–vice president


  • non–drug-naïve patients




That Wikipedia article quotes the Chicago Manual of Style:




Use it in place of a hyphen in a compound adjective when one of the elements of the adjective is an open compound, or when two or more of its elements are compounds, open or hyphenated.




No comments:

Post a Comment