Hyphens to join up numbers and figures?

Got another weird thing I'm puzzled over.

All of them looked on as the craft veered off to the north. It made a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn bringing it about; lining up with the attackers’ flank.

Should I be using it?

Thanks for your time folks.

 

I would argue that using hyphens is technically correct, so that's what I would use. However, I've seen it written the other way as well, so it looks like omitting the hyphens is starting to become acceptable. In fact, if you search "one hundred and eighty degree turn" (with the quotes) on Google, you'll find that most of the results, even the results on Google Books, omit the hyphens.

 

This is interesting. I don't think writing it with hyphens would have ever crossed my mind... But then, in Swedish we write it all in one big fat word (e.g. etthundraåttiograders) so I would have expected the English counter-part to be spelled with spaces between the numbers.

 

You could be right. I'm relying on intuition here since I don't have a grammar guide handy at the moment.

 

i wouldn't have thought of using hyphens there, either... haven't ever seen it that way that i can recall and can't think of any rule that would make it necessary...

tw... what is your source for considering it 'technically correct'?...

if it was 'a one hundred and sixty-five degree turn' then one would be needed, but not any more than that, imo...

 

Just a hunch I had. I could be wrong. What's interesting is that one of the definitions of "U-turn" in Merriam-Webster is "a 180-degree turn" (notice the hyphen). I'm not sure why the hyphen wouldn't carry over when spelling 180 out in words.

 

Puzzles, puzzles. What to do?

 

a fifty-five thousand dollar a year job and a one hundred sixty thousand dollar a year job, then, look right?

 

I'd go with a fifty-five thousand dollar-a-year job

and a one hundred sixty thousand dollar-a-year job.

Or maybe a 160,000 dollar-a-year job.

Or a $160K-a-year job.

Or ...he makes a hell of a lot of money in one single year, the lucky SOB...

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/exercises/grammar/grammar_tutorial/page_33.htm

 

But we'd definitely hyphenate 'eighty-degree temperatures,' right?

 

Yup.

 

Ok thanks for all this folks.

I'll go with one hundred and eighty-degree turn.

 

Here's a similar thread from the Writer's Digest forum. It has a lot of useful information, though I'm not sure if what they talk about is considered correct by all style guides.