Pedants' corner
Armadunno · 08/02/2023 12:12
Schar call their products Gluten-free.
The NHS do a Gluten-free diet sheet.
www.nhsinform.scot/healthy-living/food-and-nutrition/special-diets/gluten-free-diet
I never noticed it was hyphenated before!
PAFMO · 09/02/2023 17:15
It doesn't really matter and there are no hard and fixed rules. Some compounds even change, depending on what comes after them.
General rule of thumb though is that if it's a noun+adjective followed by another noun (as in gluten-free product) then you would use a hyphen. But nobody would be correct in saying you were wrong if you didn't. The hyphen is just a visible "tool" to guide the reader through a complex sentence.
PAFMO · 10/02/2023 16:35
Teeshirt · 10/02/2023 15:21
Depends whether it’s post-positive, I think the term, is, but it’s very much a style point. Eg:
The meal was gluten free.
It was a gluten-free meal
Yes, that's the general "rule", though "rules" for compounds are very subjective and even published grammar and spelling books/dictionaries don't always agree. Corpus studies even less so.
But rule of thumb is that if you're forming a compound with a noun+ adjective that goes on to modify another noun, common practice is to hyphenate. Not hyphenating isn't wrong though.
Teeshirt · 11/02/2023 12:50
PedantScorner · 11/02/2023 12:11
I'd hyphenate it, because I would hyphenate fat-free.
If you offered someone a fat free meal it could be a large meal offered as a gift, not a meal containing no fat.
Yes, but if it was a meal that was fat free, that doesn’t have the same ambiguity, and that’s why whether or not a hyphen is used can vary, depending on the sentence construction. I am an editor and our policy would be “fat-free meal” and “the meal is fat free”. Other editorial policies will vary.
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