Is this phrase "2- or 4-person" correct?

Question

When listing a numerical hyphenation...,for example "2- or 4-person", does the first number have a unconnected hyphen? What is the general rule?

Answer 1

In general you're free to choose whether to use "2- or 4-person" or "2-person or 4-person." The advantage of the first formulation is that it avoids repeating a word that (thanks to the suspended hyphen after "2") is immediately obvious to readers without further verbiage—but either method works. I have sometimes seen writers use multiple-hyphen clumping (that is, for example, "2-or-4-person") to express the same idea, but I've never seen a style guide that recommends it, and I wouldn't use it myself.

Incidentally, although they tend to differ on the question of when to stop spelling out numbers not connected to units of measure (such as inches, liters, and pounds), most style guides do recommend spelling out such numbers at least for quantities of 10 or less. So, depending on which guide you're following, you might want to render "2- or 4-person" as "two- or four-person."