Struggling to find an answer for whether "moon phase" should be hyphenated or not?
Example sentence:
Attacks were highest during the first moon phase.
-
Just call it "lunar phase".– DrosselAug 28, 2016 at 9:47
-
A general rule, often contradicted, is that you would only hyphenate "moon phase" if using the words as an adjective (vs a noun).– Hot LicksAug 28, 2016 at 12:29
-
books.google.com/ngrams/… shows the hyphenated version is very rare. To simply find out which variant is more common you can easily do your own ngram query,– k1eranAug 28, 2016 at 14:23
-
@k1eran - Ngram is quite unreliable with regard to hyphenated words.– Hot LicksAug 28, 2016 at 23:35
-
@HotLicks seems you are right. I adjusted the ngram to include spaces to the left of the hyphen, to the right, and to both sides and I got extra hits missed earlier. The total with hyphens now looks bigger, even combined still less than non-hyphenated, though data does indeed seem unreliable. So I won't say more on this. New version is : books.google.com/ngrams/…– k1eranAug 29, 2016 at 1:44
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
For a noun, here abstract, then either "lunar phase" or "phase of the moon".
"Moon phase" is more likely to be used adjectivally, though…
"If your wristwatch fails at night, try using a moon-phase clock…"
answered Aug 28, 2016 at 11:57