hyphenation - "Hardware-counter-based tools" or "hardware-counter based tools"?




Possible Duplicates:
Chainsaw-equipped or chainsaw equipped?
How to connect a word and a phrase with a hyphen?
"One-Day Only Promotion" or "One-Day-Only Promotion"



Which is more correct?



Hardware-counter-based tools



or



Hardware-counter based tools



I don't even know exactly if I should put hardware-counter or hardware-counters.



Answer



This one is tricky because it is solved with a mark of punctuation called the "en-dash." Its length is longer than a hyphen and shorter than a full em-dash. It's the middle one in this series: - – —


So with a term like "Hardware-counter-based tools" the solution is to use an en-dash between "counter" and "based," which signifies that the modifier "based" should apply to both words preceding it:



Hardware counter–based tools



Otherwise, the en-dash is used to indicate spans or ranges between units: 9:00–10:00, etc.


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