Hyphens

Hyphens are a pain. They demand attention to  hard-to-understand   rules. They are hard to love.

James Joyce decided unilaterally to get rid of hyphens altogether, but then he used them instead of inverted commas to indicate speech. So he was no help, really. It would be nice if they went away, but they won’t, so let’s deal with them.  

The rule is this: if you are running two or more adverbs, adjectives or nouns together to forge a single concept, then hyphenate them to show that they belong together. Do this when the words are in the adjectival position (before the noun).

So, you might say in reference to an unpleasant baby,  a hard-to-please, three-year-old, blue-faced, bad-tempered, spoilt little monster.  But you would also say, Wow, that child is hard to please. In the second sentence, the words are not melded into a single adjective; in the first, they are. 

He is a soft-headed, happy-go-lucky, exam-dodging student.

She is a sweet-natured, hard-working, quick-thinking grammar queen. 

You might justifiably say  that this is not a very interesting topic, and I agree. 

You might also say, pushing the limits of style a little, that this is a not-very-interesting topic. 

Why? Because I changed the position of the “not” (an adverb) in the sentence, making it, in the second, part of a (rather awkward) adjectival phrase.