hyphenation - How do I hyphenate an open-form compound word with another that should be hyphenated?


I'm confused about how to combine an open-form compound word with a word that would normally be hyphenated. There's excellent guidance for making the open vs. closed vs. hyphenated decision, but I don't see how to apply this when hyphenating the open-form word looks wrong.


For example, make a compound word out of North, America, and based. North America is open formed and something-based is hyphenated. Is Coca-Cola a...



North America-based company: this seems very wrong as it de-emphasizes North America as a proper-noun place and makes it sound like the company is based in the North part of America (which is neither accurate nor the intent of the phrase).


North America based company: feels jolting to read and omits what seems like a necessary hyphen before "based"


North-America-based company: looks best(?), but has hyphenated the open-formed compound "North America", which unlike "well-thought-out plan" still seems wrong, despite the guidance at the linked answer above regarding phrasal adjectives*.



* the aforelinked answer says every word is hyphenated in phrasal adjectives , but for some open-form words this looks wrong


Note: I think my question could be improved with an example that looks even more egregious, but I can't think of one.



Answer



The Chicago Manual prefers a spare hyphenation style; their guideline is "hyphenate only if doing so will aid readability". So Chicago would recommend North America based.


When I look up based in Wordnik, all of their examples where based is preceded by a proper name use the hyphen, e.g., U.S.-based, N.Y.-based, and so North America-based by extension.


However, I would share your reservations about joining America to based, and would use North America based.


The Chicago Manual notes:



Far and away the most common spelling questions for writers and editors concern compound terms—whether to spell as two words, hyphenate, or close up as a single word.



To aid your decision, they offer this handy table.


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