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The top answer to the question Suspended hyphen in "ever-expanding and contracting gulf"? states that "ever-expanding and -contracting" runs afoul of Chicago. (I would have asked this question in the comment section of that answer if I had enough reputation to do so.) The argument is that Chicago 7.84 (7.89 on my 15th edition) explicitly rejects "overfed and -worked mules," which would be "functionally indistinguishable" from the phrase in that question. However, Chicago's rejection comes under a paragraph referring to solid compounds. Does it follow that it must apply to hyphenated compounds as well?

Answers to related questions, such as Is it correct to say “inter- disciplinary/national” instead of “interdisciplinary and international”? and Hyphenating Multiple Compound Adjectives With Common First Word suggest that the suspended hyphen may be acceptable, even if "clunky" or "odd," but the responders did not sound too sure ("You might get away with", and "You could certainly try") nor they mention Chicago or any other source.

Although my question is general, the phrase that prompted it was "estimation of eye-pose and eye-shape parameters." If I were to ask about a specific construction, my question would be "Does 'estimation of eye-pose and -shape parameters' violate Chicago rules?"

prsm
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  • You don't need a hyphen for eye pose parameters. That will resolve most of your issues. This is just wrong, stylistically speaking: eye-pose and -shape parameters. If you have doubts, you can always ask Chicago; they take questions like this and quite often answer them. – Tinfoil Hat May 14 '21 at 04:07
  • @TinfoilHat Thank you for the answer, which indeed resolves the issue for the specific construction. But what about the general question? Does your answer also apply to "replacement of old-truck and old-car parts"? In this case the hyphen is necessary to indicate that what is old are the truck and car rather than the parts, which may as well be brand new. Thank you also for the information that Chicago takes questions, very useful to know. – prsm May 14 '21 at 04:40
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    When in doubt, just rephrase to avoid your problem: "replacement of parts for old trucks and cars". (Which has some ambiguity about whether the cars are also old, but that's the way English is) – The Photon May 14 '21 at 04:48
  • @ThePhoton Thank you, good point. It seems that repeating the word "old" in both the original and in your rephrasing would be best. In the original, it would bypass the question about hyphenation; in your rephrasing, it would avoid ambiguity. Perhaps we both went too far in trying to avoid redundancy? If either you or TinfoilHat would like to use your comments as an answer to the question, I will accept it. – prsm May 14 '21 at 05:09
  • @ThePhoton Exactly. This is not a matter of Chicago or any other 'rules'. Any rule, especially in relation to English, has hard cases, where its strict application produces something that looks silly or 'wrong'. In such a case the advice is to find another way to express it. Leave out the hyphen (no one will notice except spellcheck, which sticks its squiggly line under both hyphenated and unhyphenated versions). Or write "obese and overworked" (unless the anaphora of 'over' is rhetorically indispensable. – Tuffy May 14 '21 at 07:07
  • No hyphens here: replacement of old truck parts. The parts are old—that's why you're replacing them. In any case, if you need to use a hyphen, then repeat the word: He's an ex-partner and ex-friend. Not: *He's an ex-partner and -friend. Submit a Question to the Style Q&A – Tinfoil Hat May 14 '21 at 14:40

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