It is the individual’s responsibility to learn these things. It should be obvious why “large intensity project” and so forth needs a hyphen, so I get very frustrated that people don’t read and learn for themselves.

I don’t really agree with you there. I mean, I take your point with respect to phone numbers and other items of common sense, but if you take the view that it’s the individual’s responsibility to learn *everything* for themselves, what’s the point of having an education system?! I strongly believe that grammar needs to be taught more rigorously in schools, and if that means all the teachers need to go on a course then so be it.

Depends on who your boyfriend is, I suppose

Ha, I guess I’m very lucky mine has taught me so much on both counts then

I always thought that hyphens were optional in English

They are in a lot of cases (toothbrush, tooth brush, tooth-brush). I can’t say that they are *mandatory* in the use of compound adjectives, but they ought to be, in the same way that omitting apostrophes should be castigated, spelling plurals incorrectly should be marked with a red X, and so forth.

I realise I’m leaving myself open to responses of “describe don’t prescribe, RAR!”, but I don’t agree with letting the majority have their way if that way comes from ignorance.

Don’t you really think that this sort of thing out to be covered in schools?

But the teachers don’t know either.

I have my usual approach here. It is the individual’s responsibility to learn these things. It should be obvious why “large intensity project” and so forth needs a hyphen, so I get very frustrated that people don’t read and learn for themselves.

(A bit like how I get mad when people input phone numbers on databases without leaving any spacing. We’ve all been caught out trying to decipher these chains when we need to use them, yet half the people at work still input them in a way that they know causes problems for the reader. Observe things, learn from them, amend your habits accordingly. It should be a simple recipe.

Grammar seems rather like sex education – it’s random luck what you manage to find out and what you don’t

Depends on who your boyfriend is, I suppose

Don’t you really think that this sort of thing out to be covered in schools? Grammar seems rather like sex education – it’s random luck what you manage to find out and what you don’t

Well, first I’d heard of it and it seems rather illogical, but I have now noted it for future reference.

You handle it perfectly well when German changes the form of adjectives along the same lines:

Ich möchte ein großes Bier

versus

Das Bier ist groß__

The hyphen isn’t necessary in the case where the compound doesn’t come before the verb, since there’s no chance of ambiguity.

This is not the case where you have three elements in a row.

For example: “The best known film is ET.”

What does this mean? “Of all the “known” films, ET is the best”? “Of all films, that which is known best is ET”?

You need the hyphen to make it clear which bit is being modified. Without the hyphen you have to pick between the two forms. With the hyphen (best-known film) everything is clear.

However, there’s no room for ambiguity when the describing words follow the noun: ET is a film which is the best known.

There’s the old joke that never worked with me when I saw it in print. Say it out loud before analysing the grammar:

* What’s the best thing about shagging eighteen year olds?

* There’s eighteen of ‘em!

It never worked with me because I knew the sentence didn’t mean anything without hyphens and I mentally add them. “Eighteen-year-olds” and “eighteen year-olds” are not the same visually and may as well be different words to me, so I never saw that joke as clever.

Hyphens are great, and it sucks that people don’t use them. Of course, they’re not supposed to be used after the noun because they’re redundant. (They might logically be redundant in a lot of examples where they come before the noun, but the fact that there *could* be ambiguity in that position means that the rule came into place.)