English Language & Usage Asked by Maksim Dmitriev on March 1, 2021
As an Android developer with 3 years of experience, I also help less
experienced team members.
Do I need to put a hyphen between “less” and “experienced”?
No. This is a case of an adverb (“less”) modifying an adjectival participle (“experienced”), which in turn is modifying a noun phrase of the noun+noun type (“team members”). It is not a case where a phrase of two or more words serves as if it were a single adjective modifying a directly following noun or noun phrase, and thus requiring hyphenation as a compound adjective, as in “a man-eating lion.” (This particular example illustrates where the hyphenation is necessary resolve a possible ambiguity, since a man could eat the flesh of a lion, but even where no such possibility arises, many editors require hyphenation of compound adjectives.)
Correct answer by Brian Donovan on March 1, 2021
In a non-searchable and potentially ephemeral comment to the original posting, Professor Lawler kindly presented the following answer:
First, it focuses on degree of experience. Second, it contrasts others’ experience with yours. Third, many people use fewer and less inappropriately, and this obviates the possibility of someone reading this in that way, as well as the possibility that you will be considered one of those people by your reader.
Clearer is always better, even if it’s a little redundant; readers are not standard algorithms and don’t respond uniformly well to texts that minimize redundancy.
I’ve marked this posting Community Wiki because it is John’s answer not my own, and so I deserve no reputation from it.
Answered by tchrist on March 1, 2021
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