Saturday, February 24, 2018

hyphenation - Should "no longer" have a hyphen?

I have always put a hyphen in the fragment "no-longer X", but neither the BBC website or the Economist seem to put one in. I always thought that





The piece of string was no longer than five inches.




should not have one, but




After I cut it, the string was no-longer whole.





needed one, because longer is a comparative. Certainly when I read the two sentences above aloud I put a different emphasis on the words.



Does anyone know if this is or was common? I'm from the UK, if that makes a difference to the answer.

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