adjectives - How to write dashes in "a 2-4-room-apartment"?


I want to write in the announcement a description of an eventual apartment, which I am searching as a rental. I am interested in apartments with 2, 3, or 4 rooms. How should I write the compound adjective with numbers? With dashes or not — to indicate the range of rooms. If with dashes, should it be em or en dashes?


E.g.




  • a 2-to-4-room apartment?

  • a 2-4-room apartment?




Answer



The convention says to use an en dash to indicate the range and a hyphen to complete the phrase if you want to use numerals:



a 2–4-room apartment



That assumes that you have some control over the actual printing/display. Using all hyphens and the word to will probably be more clearly understood by your readers:



a 2-to-4-room apartment



It isn't typographically correct (you would need to spell out the numbers to make the hyphens "correct") but it gets the message across clearly -- and clarity is the most important part of any communication.


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