Job Discussion Forums

[jr1965]

Could someone help me out? I've got a question about hyphen usage. In the sentence below, would you hyphenate "English" and "language"?

My understanding is that it is correct to hyphenate sentence 1 but not sentence 2.

1) He is an English language teacher.
2) It's a rare North American species.


I've seen different info on the Web and the reason I'm posting here is that I don't have access to the Chicago Manual of Style (I'm in Spain).

Your input is appreciated! Also, this is for usage in American English.

[Gordon]

I wouldn't hypenate either sentence. They are fine the way they are. Hyphens are a funny thing, many times they are optional.

[ntropy]

I'd hyphenate sentence one. Doing so prevents confusion in the meaning, preventing us from thinking he's from England and a language teacher instead of a teacher who teaches the English language.

[fluffyhamster]

[Chasgul]

As far as I'm concerned they are both compound adjectives and should be hyphenated. The fact that there is no risk of misunderstanding in the second instance is basically an excuse for laziness.

It is worth noting that most job ad's say 'teacher of English' to avoid smart-alecs applying because they are English Physics teachers.

[jr1965]

Thanks to everyone who's replied.

I tend to agree that the first sentence should be hyphenated to avoid confusion, and because stylistically, compound modifiers before a noun are typically hyphenated (e.g., "It's a first-year requirement."), while proper compound modifiers like "North American" aren't. Uhm...right? I don't have a style guide handy!

On the other hand, if sentence 1 is contextualized (which it is in the copy I'm reviewing), it is clear that the person ("He") is a teacher of the English language, and not an Englishman who teaches (an unspecified) language. In this case, it doesn't seem necessary to use the hyphen. And yes, fluffyhamster, you're right. It would probably just be better to write Sentence 1 as "He's an English teacher." The example sentence I included (sentence 1) is just one example of "English + modifier" before a noun that I'm coming across in the text I'm reviewing. There are a number of them. Sometimes the writer uses a hyphen and at other times she doesn't. These are the little things that make me crazy!

[Chancellor]

[fluffyhamster]

[Chancellor]

[fluffyhamster]

Wow. Thanks for quoting my entire post there, C! If I didn't know you so well (irony alert) I'd assume you were trying to massage my ego (it does get rather big sometimes here on Dave's I'm afraid, for absolutely no reason at all (irony alert number 2)), rather than just playfully ruffle my fluffy fur.

Anyway, I assume you read it all, then, and found little to object to.

[Henry_Cowell]

Hyphens exist to prevent misreading or misunderstanding when two meanings are possible. If that's the case, then the hyphen is required in the second sentence:

***He is an English language teacher.
(example: an Englishman teaching the French language in Japan, to distinguish him from one of the German teachers on the same faculty of foreign-language teachers in Japan)

***He is an English-language teacher.
(example: a Spaniard -- or anyone else -- teaching English in China)

[fluffyhamster]

Oh no, not another one. Is this a wind-up or something?

Henry, I think there are much better ways to avoid ambiguity than using a hyphen (for example, making two conjoined statements, one regarding the nationality, and the other the subject taught); that is, I don't think the use or not of the hyphen really makes the "two" supposed meanings any clearer in the ways that several posters (including you) have been suggesting...see my above posts.

Basically, for the hyphenation (or lack of it) to have the meanings that you suggest, you'd probably have to add the explanations you're providing in parenthesis into the actual discourse, if you wanted the reader (and certainly the listener) to go away with the "right" idea that you "actually" meant.

As I say, let's not complicate things unnecessarily or start forming half-baked rules about what things do and don't mean.

[Henry_Cowell]

fluffy,

I simply supplied examples for which the OP's sentence would either require a hyphen or would not. My examples were correctly punctuated for the appropriate contexts.

The OP provided a common example from the editing tests that publishers administer to see if editors know the rules for hyphenation. If you're talking about formal writing, you follow those rules. The other respondents to the OP seem to know those rules and would have passed the test. You evidently don't know them and wouldn't pass. So be it.

No amount of hedging on your part will change those rules. Hyphens exist to remove ambiguity in modifiers preceding nouns. That is the reason we use them.

[Henry_Cowell]

Here are some examples from a presentation on punctuation that I've delivered in various countries. The examples never fail to elicit laughs, but they invariably lead to a better understanding of the proper use of hyphens.

fifty odd teachers
fifty-odd teachers

extra marital affair
extra-marital affair

orange juice container
orange-juice container

cross section of the audience
cross-section of the audience

little used car
little-used car

[fluffyhamster]

I'm still not sure that 'English language teacher' will mean anything other than 'English teacher' or 'EFL teacher' to many readers, so I'd question the necessity of the hyphen there (as did Gordon); not adding the hyphen certainly doesn't signal that he is absolutely English by nationality, and hyphenating it just serves to spell out that it is indeed the subject that is being talked about. My point therefore is merely that in this instance, if the nationality of the teacher is indeed an issue, it will probably need to be explicitly stated or made clear through the use of means other than hyphenation e.g. abbreviations such as JTE.

Putting it another way, saying 'an orange' and then proceeding to say 'juice container' cuts right across a common collocation (the noun phrase 'orange juice'), and I'm not sure how many times I've heard 'juice container' (as opposed perhaps to 'container'); that is, you can I suppose be meaning wihout the hyphenation that the 'juice container' is orange, but I'd interpret it as being a container full of orange juice, and the hyphenation merely confirms this (unnecessarily) to me, in much the same way as 'English (language) teacher' > 'English(-language) teacher'.

I'm not however saying that hyphens don't have their uses, as your examples generally show.