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IF it was correct to say "lower right-hand corner," you're right about
that hyphen. But it's not. I just finished deleting a bunch of
"-hand"s from some documents that were written, obviously, before I
started working here.
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I always felt that the hyphen was used to indicate that the first word was
a modifier of the second word. Our Oracle Documentation Handbook discusses
this issue, and does in fact suggest a preference for the fusion of these
compound words, such as checklist, pathname, etc. This is certainly a
reasonable approach for something that has started to become an "entity", or
words that are almost always present together. Others, such as "lower right",
do not warrant this approach, however. I also don't think the one is a
direct modifier, either.
But what about saying "righthand"? "Righthand woman" sounds good to me, and
would also hold true for "lower righthand corner", except that what Beth says
is true: you don't need, or want, the "-hand" in this context.
The Oracle handbook also provides the following tip, which I think bears
passing on in this issue:
"Ensure that hyphenation is a help to communication, not a hindrance. When
in doubt, check if the absence of a hyphen alters the meaning. Some examples:
- a high level table or a high level table
- a state-of-the-art work or [the] state of the artwork
- a foreign-policy adviser or a foreign policy adviser
