hyphenation - Hyphen or no hyphen when modifying an adjective with a quantity?


I have a sentence which has an object that is described with an adjective:



We need to inform our interested patrons of this change.



If I modify "interested" with "more" or "less", do I connect the words with a hyphen or not? Example sentence:



We need to inform our less-interested patrons of this change.




Also, please let me know if I have not used the correct terms for sentence parts in this question.



Answer



According to Whitesmoke, "Hyphens are used to link words that function as a single adjective before a noun."
But the stronger rule seems to be, if a hyphen would reduce confusion, use it. IMHO, a hyphen makes your example read more clearly... but according to this Wikipedia article, "Compound adjectives that include comparatives and superlatives with more, most, less or least" are not normally hyphenated.
In short, there doesn't appear to be a hard-and-fast rule (wait, should I have not hyphenated that?).


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