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How would you suggest to list centuries here:

Suspended hyphen:

In the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries...

Separated by commas:

In the late nineteenth-, and early twentieth-, centuries...

Spelled out in full:

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries...

Or, finally, condensed:

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries...

Any help, or reference to style manuals would be hugely appreciated!

Gregory
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  • One and two are obviously not an option, as "nineteenth century" is two words, not one. Suspended hyphens make no sense there. The last two options are valid, but which one you pick is entirely up to you. Just make sure to be consistent throughout the document. – RegDwigнt May 24 '14 at 20:32
  • See, I don't agree that No. 1 is invalid. And it doesn't strike me as a repeat (I read through the suspended hyphen entries), mainly because of the compounded "late ___ and early ____" I'm not convinced by the "use of hyphen in consecutive compounds" entry. – Gregory May 24 '14 at 20:37
  • Xth century should be hyphenated only when it acts as compound attributive: 19th-century literature, not when it acts as a nominal, literature in the 19th Century. – StoneyB on hiatus May 24 '14 at 22:19
  • With modern fonts I prefer writing 19th and 20th with the th as a superscript these days. –  May 25 '14 at 00:13

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