I am seeing punctuation for ranges (i.e. nonfiction) headed in this direction: 25-30 year old men 25 and 30 year old men 25 or 30 year old men 20-30, 35-40, and 45-50 year old men 20-30, 35-40, and 45-50 year olds 5-10 inch aperture 20-30 gallon bucket 50-60 mile radius 10-20 foot wide opening 15-20 foot deep water 12-15 foot long piece of lumber But for singular entities hyphens are used: 30-year-old men a 30-year-old a 30-gallon bucket 10-inch aperture 20-foot-wide opening 15-foot-long piece of lumber 20-foot-deep water 60-mile radius ... and so on. Do the first set of examples involving ranges look clear to you upon first reading them? I think they do, and they bypass all the suspended hyphenation gobbledygook. Would you support their usage in nonfiction, and would you use them as an alternative to suspended hyphenation? Please let me know your thoughts. Sincerely, Jake
These are all correct. They are much easier to read, as is, than employing clunky suspension hyphens. I read each of them and understood exactly what you meant.
