punctuation - Hyphenation in compound adjectives




Possible Duplicates:
To hyphenate or not?
When is it necessary to use a hyphen in writing a compound word?
When is it appropriate to use a hyphen?



In the sentence "Portland is known to be one of the most bike friendly cities in the US", is a hyphen necessary in "bike friendly"? As far as I know, the hyphen is only required when leaving it out would cause ambiguity. Wikipedia uses the example of "a small appliance factory" vs "a small-appliance factory".


As far as I can tell, the sentence above is pretty clear. A quick google search for "bike friendly city" brings up instances of both hyphenated and non-hyphenated usage. Thoughts?


Please excuse the poor formatting, sent from my iPhone.




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