grammar - "One-Day Only Promotion" or "One-Day-Only Promotion"


A copywriter I'm working with wrote "One-Day Only Promotion" but my feeling is that "One-Day-Only Promotion" is correct. The first three words describe 'Promotion'. I know you don't hyphenate adverbs, but does that apply when one is part of a compound adjective?



Answer



It should be one-day-only promotion, for the reason you reported.



Have a look at some more genuine, authentic, certified, they-really-happened hyphos (a word we've made up on the model of typos): sung-lasses, barf-lies, warp-lanes, doork-nobes, broom-sticks, pre-gnant, air-trips, boot-traps, stars-truck, sli-pup, ong-oing. —Comma sense, Richard Lederer, John Shore



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