Hello. Is it okay to leave out the hyphens in the phrasal adjective below? The only thing I'd leave in is the hyphen in “forty-five”, because it's an ordinal number between 21 and 99, correct? Is this sentence acceptable exactly as written? √ Luis said, "Then why did she give up a forty-five thousand dollar a year job?"
Sounds clumsy. I'd write it: Luis said, "Then why did she give up a job that paid forty-five thousand a year?" As for your question, I'm not sure where you're saying the missing hyphens would go?
Some would say OK, but methinks you could fully hyphenate as forty-five-thousand-dollar-a-year job. One long adjective describing the job. The phrase could be made more concise e.g. ... a job that paid forty-five grand (per annum is implied.)
I'd stick with the hyphenation in the original sentence by the OP. It's clear what he's saying. As for rearranging the sentence - yes, you could, but this is dialogue, so if that's the way the character would say it, then I'd stick with it.
Now, for a verbatim transcription, I have the following: Mr. Connor said, “The Atco Corporation is a sixty to seventy million dollar a year business juggernaut.” Obviously, I am not permitted to alter the wording. Would you include hyphens in that range and, if so, where would you put them? Or is it written okay as is? I value your input... Thank you.
I'd probably write: "The Atco Corporation is a sixty- to seventy-million dollar a year business juggernaut." You could add four more hyphens but I think it would look odd. EDIT: Now that I'm looking at it, I don't think it needs hyphens after sixty or seventy. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's wrong
So leave it as I had it originally, correct? Mr. Connor said, “The Atco Corporation is a sixty to seventy million dollar a year business juggernaut.”
To hold this clumsy phrase together, I've decided to go with: a sixty-to-seventy-million-dollar-a-year business juggernaut The hyphens undoubtedly aid readability here.
The New Yorker uses hyphens with the word "to" for an age range: twenty-to-thirty-year-old men So I think that the same principle could be applied to my example. And The New Yorker's punctuation is about as good as it gets.
If we use a room number in a quote, do we write it like this? I was taught that we speak in words, not in numbers. Diane said, "Bill is in room number seven." (ALSO: ". . . in room seven.") Val said, "Her phone number is three- five-six, eight-four-seven-one." How do you write this one? Hyphens between the numbers, up until the comma? The cashier was assigned to register seven. / The cashier was assigned to register number seven.
Like yourself, my understanding is that numbers in dialogue are spelt, whereas in the narrative we use figures. It's a general rule, but not always that simple to apply. For instance, in my novel, I have a drug called C9. I don't have to call it this, of course, but I like it. However, it does raise the question how do I write it in dialogue? 'C-Nine' doesn't have quite the same visual impact, does it? As for your own question, I'd say it's correct as you have it.
