Kirk Mahoney . com

My wife saw this title yesterday on a manual from ChildBuilders.

Problems:
1. The first adjective is misspelled.
2. The range is written incorrectly.
3. Everything before “Curriculum” should be hyphenated.

Explanation:
ChildBuilders is an admirable non-profit organization aimed at preventing mental-health problems in children.

So this title on the cover of a printed manual aimed at teachers and school administrators is especially embarrassing.

First, “Forth” (spelled without a “u”) should be “Fourth” (spelled with a “u”) — as in fourth grade.

Second, a range of ordinal numbers should be written with the preposition “to” in the middle — as in first to third or as in seventh to ninth.

Third, when a range is used to modify a noun (for example, “Grade”) that in turn modifies another noun (for example, “Curriculum”), everything before the final noun should be hyphenated.

The solution comes from these three corrections.

Solution:
“Fourth-to-Sixth-Grade Curriculum”