Budweiser Brewing Group UK is running an advertising campaign in the national press, promoting its “community” benefits. I spotted this in The Guardian yesterday:
Skating over the awkward phrasing of “all in on”, I was struck by the long multi-hyphenated phrase “state-of-the-art-de-alcoholisation”. We can imagine how this arose: the writer identified the need to hyphenate “state-of-the-art” (known as a compound modifier), but then got confused about where the hyphenation stopped! They just needed to know that the noun is not hyphenated with the compound modifier.
Compounding the error, as it were, they also hyphenated “dealcoholisation” to create a five-hyphen monster.
My attention was initially drawn to the line break after the first hyphen. It is standard practice to use non-breaking hyphens with hyphenated words, so they stay together on the next line.
It is often tempting to hyphenate long words. Best to check a dictionary, or employ a proofreader, and avoid any embarrassment!
