COMPUTER SYSTEMS RESEARCH
Elements of Technical Writing
2005-2006

  • Hyphenate two adjacent nouns if they are both necessary to express a single idea
    1. In English, the trend has been to first join frequently used compound nouns with a hypen and eventually make them one word 
        air craft  air-craft  aircraft
  data base  data-base  database
  type setting  type-setting typesetting

  light-year
  tie-rod