I'm creating signage for "Long-term Ventilation Unit" and am keeping it as how I just wrote it. But when Googling, I became slightly confused on whether it is "Long Term Ventilation Unit" or the way I wrote it is just fine.
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1Does this answer your question? Is it correct to hyphenate with compound premodifiers? If so, where is the hyphen placed? << File-system related job vs File system related job, etc. >> One can check first whether long term is preferred with the hyphen when prenominal, in dictionaries.– Edwin AshworthCommented Mar 23, 2022 at 15:42
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There is no consistency in hyphenation practices, so looking on the internet will produce even more confusion. Do what you think is right; that's what everybody else does.– John LawlerCommented Mar 23, 2022 at 17:16
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2 Answers
Compound adjectives can be hyphenated to remove ambiguity, or open when there is no ambiguity.
The potential ambiguity is that you have a "Long Term-Ventilation Unit": a long unit for ventilating terms. Since that seems improbable, the meaning is far more likely that you have a ventilation unit available for a long term.
However, all ambiguity can be removed by adding the hyphen in the right place. It's not wrong.
answered Mar 23, 2022 at 8:20
Here, "Long-term Ventilation Unit" looks right; "Long term Ventilation Unit" is occasionally seen, but that can be a bit ambiguous.
The Main Point is that "long term" has adjective "long" acting on "term", whereas "long-term" is itself the adjective acting on the following noun.
Hence, "long-term" is right in your case.
