Timeline for Is a lengthy combination of words with hyphens like “the worst not-technically-in-a-recession year in American history” a new fashion of writing?

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Sep 13, 2023 at 14:02	comment	added	Stuart F		The term formal is increasingly meaningless. The multiply-hyphened expression is literary but not terribly polite or elegant (but its inelegance is deliberate).
Oct 16, 2012 at 11:30	comment	added	Edwin Ashworth		However, from Jane Straus at grammarbook.com/punctuation/hyphens.asp : When adverbs not ending in -ly are used as compound words in front of a noun [not after], hyphenate. Examples: The well-known actress accepted her award. Well is an adverb followed by another descriptive word. They combine to form one idea in front of the noun. The actress who accepted her award was well known. Well known follows the noun it describes, so no hyphen is used. A long-anticipated decision was finally made. He got a much-needed haircut yesterday. His haircut was much needed.
Oct 16, 2012 at 0:33	comment	added	Edwin Ashworth		I'd say extraordinarily-long hyphenation is as acceptable as really-long hyphenation. Secondary (pre-) modifiers such as frighteningly, eerily, and intensifiers and downtoners (eg very, vastly, rather, quite, a little) don't take a hyphen before the adjective or adverb they modify. There is not the possibility of confusion as between thirty-year-old trees and thirty year-old trees.
Oct 15, 2012 at 23:52	history	edited	J.R.	CC BY-SA 3.0	Removed a few hyphens after reading Martha's astute comment. Some of these were a bit overly-stretched.
Oct 15, 2012 at 23:33	comment	added	Marthaª		The only valid hyphen I see in this answer is the one in "extraordinarily-long", and even that is stylistically debatable. As such, this is not at all an example of the phenomenon being asked about.
Oct 3, 2012 at 5:03	history	answered	Madhur Akanksha Varshney	CC BY-SA 3.0