man eating beetle vs man-eating beetle - the difference a hyphen makes


OK - so this is a little sillier than normal for me, but I struck upon inspiration and went with it.  The spelling/grammar program Grammarly I use frequently wants me to add hyphens to word combinations.  For example, red winged blackbird right away tells me I need to use red-winged.  The same goes for other pairings such as fun loving person (fun-loving), state of the art design (state-of-the-art), and friendly looking dog (friendly-looking).   

I have never been a fan of grammar; the subject in school would usually be my undoing, and mastering the hyphen has been more difficult than other aspects of English syntax.  However, it occurred to me that it could be fun to play with, and so I have made an effort to put together some expressions that would be interesting.

I came up with some and some are from the grammarbcheck website and the medium.com website

  •  red handed thief                              red-handed thief
  •  two hundred odd members             two hundred-odd members
  •  slow moving people                       slow-moving people
  •  little used car                                  little-used car
  •  anti domestic abuse                        anti-domestic abuse
  • ten year old children                        ten-year-old children
  • real time management                      real-time management
Anyways, it was an interesting project.  I will have to pay more attention to using hyphens.  

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com


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