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Subject:Re: Hyphen Placement From:Kelly Hoffman <kelly -at- NASHUA -dot- HP -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 18 May 1995 15:25:42 -0400
Kristin Hackney <khackney -at- RESEARCH -dot- WESTLAW -dot- COM> writes:
> Many of us in our tech communications group don't like the look of
> two hyphens in a row (as in the first example) and would like to
> know if either of the others are acceptable.
_Words_into_Type_ says to use an en dash instead of a hyphen in a
compound when one of the components contains a hyphen. That would
result in "CD-ROM--based" (using -- instead of an en dash).
IMO, though, "CD-ROM-based" (however it's punctuated) is difficult to
parse and slows down my reading rate. It's also rather jargon-y.
> By the way, we often work our why around this by writing something like
> "reference books based on CD-ROM," but we'd like to settle it.
"reference books stored on CD-ROM" or "reference books about CD-ROM"
might be clearer (depending on context).
Regards,
kkh
--
Kelly K. Hoffman Hewlett-Packard, Network Test Division, Nashua, NH
kelly -at- nashua -dot- hp -dot- com "Reading the manual is admitting defeat."
