Re: "late arriving" or "late-arriving?"

["Susan W. Gallagher" <susanwg -at- ix -dot- netcom -dot- com>]

Sorry to burst your bubble, Timothy -- and
I don't even play a prescriptive grammarian
on TV!  ;-)
CMS para 6.41
"Formerly, adjectival compounds, except those
beginning with an adverb ending in /ly/, were
generally hyphenated before the noun they modified
and open after the noun. The University of Chicago
Press now takes the position that the hyphen may
be omitted in all cases where there is little or
no risk of ambiguity or hesitation. It also means,
of course, that when ambiguity is liekly, the
compound adjective, whatever its position, should
be hyphenated."

So, if you follow CMS, those adverbial adjectival
compounds were never hyphenated; today, they use
hyphens only when ambiguity is possible. (in your
examples, then, only the first *can* be hyphenated,
but you don't have to)

We, as tech writers, can argue that the hyphen is
necessary to remove all possibilities of ambiguity.
And then there's the issue of consistency... . We,
as a group, are fond of serial commas and hyphenated
compounds to forestall ambiguity to begin with. Heck,
I won't even use the word "with" in documentation.

But, be that as it may, those /ly/ compounds don't
get a hyphen.


At 02:17 PM 4/5/02 -0500, Trese, Timothy G. wrote: