Compound modifiers

• Use a hyphen to join descriptors that describe and precede a noun.

Examples:

• The plain-spoken candidate is the one who will win the voters’ trust.

            The candidate isn’t plain. The candidate isn’t spoken. Neither makes sense. The descriptors need to work together here. Use a hyphen between them to make that happen.

• She is a fair-weather friend.

            Fair doesn’t doesn't describe friend, it describes weather. Together fair and weather describe -- or modify --  the noun, friend.

  

• Volunteers from Journey’s End greeted the refugee’s long-overdue arrival in the United States.

            Long and overdue together describe the noun, arrival.

CAUTION: Make sure that the descriptors need to act together. Here, they don’t:

The tedious, juvenile movie should have been edited better to make it more interesting.

            The movie is tedious. The movie is also juvenile. Either one could be used by itself to describe the movie, but the writer wanted to emphasize just how lousy the movie was, so both adjectives were used. Here, tedious is not used to describe juvenile.