0

Which of the two is grammatically correct?

  1. The snap election results are in.
  2. The snap-election results are in.

The sentence should refer to the results of an election that was announced suddenly and unexpectedly.

Improve this question
4
  • 1
    Good question; however, I think it isn't about grammar but about punctuation. I edited to add a few tags that I think might be relevant
    – herisson
    Commented Oct 8, 2017 at 6:46
  • 1
    Related, but not the same: How should a multiple-word noun be punctuated within a compound adjective? Sven Yargs' answer gives one example of what seems to be an attributive noun phrase being hyphenated as a "phrasal adjective": "video-game-magazine dispute", from The Chicago Manual of Style, fifteenth edition (2003). However, choosing whether to hyphenate or not seems to be optional
    – herisson
    Commented Oct 8, 2017 at 6:56
  • 2
    I'd use 'results of the snap election', as snap election isn't as unitary as say general election.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Oct 8, 2017 at 8:33
  • 1
    Possible duplicate of When to use a hyphen to coin a new word and when to omit a hyphen?
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Oct 10, 2017 at 17:49

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

To me, "snap election results" seems better. I agree with Nigel J that it seems like someone who uses a hyphen in "snap-election results" should also use a hyphen in "general-election results" for consistency, unless the person hyphenates "snap-election" in all contexts (not only when it comes before another noun).

According to Hawking Hyphens in Compound Modifiers, by Joan Ames Magat:

The MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing [says]: “Use hyphens in . . . compound adjectives before nouns to prevent misreading. . . . Do not use hyphens in familiar unhyphenated compound terms such as social security, high school, and liberal arts, when they appear before nouns as modifiers.”

I would note also that it seems that in general, the hyphenation of attributive "nominals" (in the terminology of the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, "nominal" refers to a smaller unit than a noun phrase: "the high school", with the determiner "the", is a noun phrase while "high school" without a determiner is a "nominal") is less common than hyphenation of attributive adjective phrases.

(Note: Attributive "nominals" can usually be distinguished from attributive adjective phrases by the application of the same tests that can be used to distinguish attributive nouns from attributive adjectives, like seeing if the phrase can be used as a predicate by itself—"high school" in "high school students" cannot (*"These students are high school")—or if it can be modified by the adverb "very"—"high school" cannot (*"very high school students").)

Compound Modifiers - Writing.com notes that in "noun noun noun" phrases, the first two nouns are usually not hyphenated, even when the phrase has the structure [[noun noun] noun]:

Exception 1: Don’t hyphenate if both elements of the compound modifier are nouns.

  • The ice cream truck is here!
  • John Travolta starred in Saturday Night Fever.

These sentences are easily understood without hyphens.

The Oxford English Dictionary seems to say that "snap" in phrases like "snap election" actually comes from a verb rather than a noun (it wasn't intuitively obvious to me), but in any case, "snap" doesn't quite seem to be an adjective to me and "election" certainly isn't, so the case for hyphenation seems rather weak to me.

Improve this answer
1
  • 1
    'General election results' is of course inherently ambiguous, though rarely in need of disambiguation beyond natural context.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Oct 8, 2017 at 15:21
2

Examples abound that 'general election results' is in current use rather than 'general-election results' so the same would apply for the snap election.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2017/jun/08/live-uk-election-results-in-full-2017

But it is only correct to say pre-election results as one could not say, 'pre election results.'

Hyphens are used in prefixed words (like pre-election) but the tendency nowadays is not to hyphenate compound words, although it is not actually wrong to do so.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/punctuation/hyphen

Improve this answer
3
  • 1
    Thanks @Nigel J, but what is the grammatical explanation for it? Why do all those authors choose to write it that way?
    – danger mouse
    Commented Oct 8, 2017 at 6:27
  • 2
    Hyphens are used when they are important for clarity. Otherwise, usually not used.
    – Xanne
    Commented Oct 8, 2017 at 8:04
  • 1
    But 'general election' is a compound whereas 'snap election' is a less coherent pairing, I'd say a fairly tightly bound collocation. The argument from analogy isn't felicitous. I notice you don't mention by-elections.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Oct 8, 2017 at 8:30

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .