“7x time Tour de France Winner”

Hyphens, Redundancies

I saw this on the Web in a banner advertisement for a nutritional product promoted by Lance Armstrong.

Problem:
The phrase contains a redundancy.

Explanation:
The banner ad is for a product named FRS, and Lance Armstrong’s portrait and Tour de France record appear in the banner.

The “x” in “7x” means “time”.

So “7x” means “7-time” — spelled 7-HYPHEN-T-I-M-E.

Therefore, either the “x” or the word “time” is redundant in “7x time Tour de France Winner”.

Solution:
“7x Tour de France Winner”
or
“7-time Tour de France Winner” (Notice the required hyphen between “7” and “time”!)