Learn English – “Well dressed” vs “well-dressed”

compoundshyphensorthographyword-order

In my English exercise book there is this sentence:

The young lady is well dressed.

It asks to rephrase it in a new sentence, and provides this solution:

The well dressed young lady.

I think that the sentence above should be:

The well-dressed young lady (a hyphen between the words well and dressed).
Am I wrong?

Best Answer

As per StoneyB's comment, the hyphen is effectively optional.

In OP's specific example, most people probably would include it, but grammatically the usage is no different in, say,...

a recently published review

...which as you'll see if you follow the link, most writers don't hyphenate.


Since language is primarily spoken, one must be careful when suggesting the presence or absence of the hyphen has any semantic significance. But sometimes there really is a difference - for example,...

"It won't work properly unless you do the right mouse click"

...where it's possible the right (correct) mouse-click is in fact a left (or middle) click. This is one of those rare cases where (in principle) the written form can be less ambiguous than the spoken form...

1: right-mouse-click (definitely the one on the opposite side to the left-mouse-click).
2: right mouse click (completely ambiguous)
3: right mouse-click (potentially ambiguous)

Some native speakers will think they can unambiguously indicate whether they mean right=correct or right=[opposite of left] depending on stress patterns and pauses, but in practice many native listeners still won't be 100% sure what was meant.