Help with the rules about when words are separate, hyphenated or shoved together?

[JoshandJamie]

I know that I am a nasty PR/marketing person who therefore has very little brain and should rightly know this, but I've spent too long in SA and the USA and am now getting things muddled.

Can someone please tell me when words should be hyphenated vs. separate vs. put together as a single word?

For example, stair gates. I have that as a single word but am sure that's wrong. Are there hard and fast rules about this?

Thanks in advance.

Where are all the pedants? Surely this is within your remit? C'mon. Genuinely need help.

If in doubt, separate words are rarely wrong.

(and it is late, most pedants are tucked up in bed with their cocoa by now )

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Haha, it's not even that much of a rule at any of the publishers I've worked for, Pruners. Some of them ban hyphens in your adjectival phrases. Some have their own hyphenation lists, to be treated as gospel, no matter how absurd. Others ask (nay, plead) for mere consistency within an article.
Separate words are aesthetically pleasing but open to lots of lovely misinterpretation -- think 'man eating tiger'.

Really, really bored with today's work, as you can see.

ah but adverb+adjective (intellectually-challenged, man-eating) are different from the 'compound words' like stairgate mentioned in the OP, non?

Generic 'rules' on hyphenation in English are generally not possible, and it really depends on a case-by-case basis.

As a writer or editor if you generally find Oxford rules acceptable, then this is a quick/useful tool which enables you at least to believe that you are right!

Where i work we have a house style - and hyphens of any kind are a bit frowned upon!

Which just goes to prove that I am not actually that thick after all but that the English language is ridiculous.

Our style guide used the example:

Six-day-old chicks
Six day-old chicks

which was quite useful for adjectival usage. However, I would agree that other things depoend on journal/periodical/newspaper style, e.g. semi-colon or semicolon (I had journals that were rather specific on that one).

I agree with Pruners for adjective/noun.

"The working class" (where "class" is a noun)

But "a working-class family" (where "working-class" is a compound adjective, used to describe the family, which is the noun.)

It's important to get it right because sometimes it makes a difference to meaning - eg the example yoyo gives. Or, to use working-class again, "a working class-mate" is different from "a working-class mate". In the first example the noun is class-mate, and working is used to describe the noun. In the second, mate is the noun, and working-class is the adjective used to describe them.

When it's compound nouns (like classmate or stairgate) it's sometimes a matter of choice, or sometimes down to custom and a matter of right and wrong.

If it's an old word there is usually a right and wrong, because custom has been established. For example, you can't choose whether to say blackbird, black-bird or black bird. A blackbird has a distinctly different meaning to a black bird and it would be a matter of right and wrong to confuse the two.

Stair-gates on the other hand are relatively new, and I would think you could say either stair-gate or stair gate or even stair-gate. There hasn't been time to build up a formal consensus as far as I know.

Lots of established compound nouns are in dictionaries so you can always look them up, if in doubt.

Use a dictionary. If you have multiple queries, it is the best tool. Back it up with the Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors. A little note on compound adjectives - I see the example of an "intellectually challenged man" above. That's wrong: you don't hyphenate compound adjectives when the first word takes an "ly" ending. Can't recall why, but that's correct.

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interesting, shame i don't understand it
i tend to let spell check tell me, however that could be americanised

From a reputable source. And on "ly" compound adjectives, I've been taught that everywhere I've worked, and it's put in style guides of lots of places I haven't, so I'm betting that body of opinion is correct, Pruners. See below from an online style guide (the Guardian's):

Hyphens
Our style is to use one word wherever possible. Hyphens tend to clutter up text (particularly when the computer breaks already hyphenated words at the end of lines).

This is a widespread trend in the language: "The transition from space to hyphen to close juxtaposition reflects the progressive institutionalisation of the compound," as Rodney Huddleston puts it in his Introduction to the Grammar of English.

Inventions, ideas and new concepts often begin life as two words, then become hyphenated, before finally becoming accepted as one word. Why wait? "Wire-less" and "down-stairs" were once hyphenated.

Words such as handspring, madhouse and talkshow are all one word in the Guardian, as are thinktank (not a tank that thinks), longlist (not necessarily a long list) and shortlist (which need not be short).

Prefixes such as macro, micro, mega, mini, multi, over, super and under rarely need hyphens: examples are listed separately. Follow Collins when a word or phrase is not listed in this guide.

There is no need to use hyphens with most compound adjectives, where the meaning is clear and unambiguous without: civil rights movement, financial services sector, work inspection powers etc. Hyphens should, however, be used to form short compound adjectives, eg two-tonne vessel, stand-up comedian, three-year deal, 19th-century artist, etc.

Also use hyphens where not using one would be ambiguous, eg to distinguish "black-cab drivers come under attack" from "black cab-drivers come under attack".

Do not use hyphens after adverbs ending in -ly, eg politically naive, wholly owned, but when an adverb is also an adjective (eg hard), the hyphen is required to avoid ambiguity- it's not a hard, pressed person, but a hard-pressed one; an ill-prepared report, rather than an ill, prepared one.

Use hyphens with short and common adverbs: much-needed grammar lesson, well-established principle of style (note though that in the construction "the principle of style is well established" there is no need to hyphenate)

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