Hyphen between 2 words when prefix is in front of the 2 words

Question

What's the correct way to put a prefix in front of something that's 2 or more words?
Pre-Neolithic Revolution or pre-Neolithic-Revolution
Pro-affirmative action or pro-affirmative-action
Post-Civil War or post-Civil-War
Non-high school or non-high-school (student)

Lawrence · Answer

With a single hyphen, you have an adjective and a noun. When you hyphenate throughout, the multiply-hyphenated term is an adjective.
To use one of your examples:

a post-civil war is a war (noun) that is no longer (‘post’) civil (adjective); whereas
a post-civil-war landscape is a landscape following a civil war.

In these constructions, the words in the hyphenated compound modify each other. For example, post” modifies “civil war”, and “civil” modifies “war”.

Hyphen between 2 words when prefix is in front of the 2 words

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