Correct hyphenation for conjunction of hyphenated compound adjectives


Consider the following sentence:



The labour-intensive and time-intensive part starts tomorrow.



I want to write this without rewriting the word "intensive."


Is this the correct way to do it?



The labour- and time-intensive part starts tomorrow.



Note the hyphen hanging after the word labour. Or should there be no hyphen after labour? Can anyone point me to a reference that talks about this?



Answer



Fowler recommends that you leave out the hyphen after labour there, because it is not strictly needed for comprehension. I don't have a reference on hand, but it is no doubt in his Dictionary of Modern English Usage, a highly respected style book.


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