abbreviations - Can one use a hyphen to form 2 words with same prefix


Consider this part of a sentence:



[...] the development of neurodegenerative and neuroinflammatory disorders.



I'm wondering if it is acceptable to omit the "neuro" prefix before "inflammatory" and put a hyphen (-) before "degenerative" to indicate that the next word also begins with this prefix (this is to save space). Saving space is actually important as this is for a grant proposal with limited number of pages/words allowed.


Therefore I want to know if this sentence is grammatically correct:



[...] the development of neuro-degenerative and inflammatory disorders.



I hope this is not a duplicate I did not know how to properly search for that situation.



Answer



In some cases of dangling hyphens, the hyphen is put (back) into a word that used to commonly have it or occasionally still does. For example "inter- and intra-species". You may be able to do something similar in this case: "neuro-degenerative and -inflammatory".


If you couldn't get away with the hyphenated forms, this wouldn't work. A good internal peer review is of course necessary in grant proposals - hopefully you have someone who would nitpick things like this.


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