To hyphenate or not to hyphenate: Grammatically correct or aesthetically pleasing text?

Question

Marketing is asking us (Development) to change some UI text to be grammatically incorrect. Specifically, they're basically asking to remove hyphens from compound adjectives (e.g., 'thirty-foot wingspan', 'late-fee messages').

That would change the meaning of the text. But maybe 95% of users don't know better. In which case, there's an argument to be made that grammatically incorrect equates to a better user experience.

And there is one case where I myself have opted not to use hyphens even though they are called for, grammatically speaking. Example:

"Show credit card transactions"

I'm curious if anyone else has settled on a rule for this. Or if there's a style guide that has good guidance on this question.

Answer 1

The Associated Press Stylebook, commonly adopted by publications and marketing departments, used to require hyphens between compound adjectives but changed its guidelines in 2019:

We updated our hyphen guidance this year to say no hyphen is needed in a compound modifier if the modifier is commonly recognized as one phrase, and if the meaning is clear and unambiguous without the hyphen. One example is first quarter touchdown.

However, the Chicago Manual of Style, another widely adopted styleguide, still recommends using hyphens for compound adjectives.

As a former marketing copywriter, I can attest that using hyphens with compound adjectives often confused content reviewers, who would remove them even though they were "stylistically" correct. Your marketing department may have come to the conclusion that the average reader doesn't understand why the hyphens are there and therefore decided to no longer use them.