Hyphens, En Dashes, Em Dashes
Q. How do you treat an age term with a range of large numbers in decimal form: “3.5-million-year-old fossil,” right? And if it’s a fossil between 3.2 and 3.5 million years old, but the author insists on a sentence structure like the first example, isn’t “3.2- to 3.5-million-year-old fossil” best? Or “3.2-to-3.5-million-year-old fossil”? Or—surely not!—“3.2–3.5–million-year-old fossil” or connecting the whole thing with en dashes (through “old”)? Thank you.
A. CMOS uses the first style (3.2- to 3.5-million-year-old fossil, per section 7.85). But then what happens when you get to the 3.2- to 3.5-million-year-old-eastern-African-primitive-hominid-fossil-remains theory? The best approach is to avoid strings of hyphens or en dashes, and combining them should be an absolute last resort. Give yourself a limit of two or three typographical boogers in a row, and whenever there’s danger of exceeding it, consider rewriting.