Talk:John Hamilton (New Jersey politician)

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(18th century politician) to (18th-century politician)[edit]

Would there be any objection to moving this article to John Hamilton (18th-century politician)? Since 18th and century are working together as a compound adjective before the noun politician, it should be hyphenated. John Hamilton (18th century politician) would remain as a redirect to the new title. If there's a consensus, or at least no objection, I'll make the move in about a week. Thank you. SchreiberBike (talk) 21:26, 15 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Object. It's a noun adjunct not an adjective, therefore without a hyphen. Your premise is grammatically incorrect.--ColonelHenry (talk) 03:07, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@ColonelHenry:My grammar skills are not strong, but I checked pretty carefully before making the proposal above so I am confused.

From WP:NUMERAL I get "Centuries are given in figures or words using adjectival hyphenation where appropriate: the 5th century BCE; nineteenth-century painting."
From the Chicago Manual of Style, in reference to centuries, I get Noun forms always open; adjectival compounds hyphenated before but not after a noun.
From the AP Stylebook, under hyphen I get "When a compound modifier — two or more words that express a single concept — precedes a noun, use hyphens to link all the words in the compound except the adverb very and all adverbs that end in -ly:" followed by examples.

I find the same rule in many other less established sources on line. Please help me understand what you're thinking. Thanks, SchreiberBike (talk) 04:21, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@SchreiberBike, there's controversy on the issue of hyphenating compound nouns and no two style guides will give you the same answer. The current usage is probably 50-50% either hyphenated or non-hyphenated, where as 30 years ago it would be skewed heavily towards eschewing hyphens. English, especially American English (where the hyphen is ubiquitous), unfortunately is moving towards making more things adjectival which is a disgusting habit that weakens the efficacy of language. For most of the last 500 years of modern English, the conventional wisdom dictated that the names of centuries were considered proper nouns, and when combined with another noun formed what is called a "noun adjunct" where a noun functions like an adjective modifying another noun. Being that proper nouns are rarely hyphenated, proper nouns as noun adjuncts were almost never hyphenated.

Where Wikipedia is concerned, apparently policy conforms with Chicago and the move to hyphenate...but it appears the policy advises hyphenation when the ordinal number is spelled out (eighteenth-century politician vs. 18th century politician)...as their example is not "5th-century BCE. Even Chicago doesn't have an 18th-century example."

Frankly, I think something better than "18th century politician" would be more appropriate--something that evokes his colonial work--but I'm not yet inspired how properly to phrase it. Do what you want, it's rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things.--ColonelHenry (talk) 15:18, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]