I saw the phrase with the hyphen last night in an Acura advertisement on television.<\/p>\n
Problem:<\/strong> Explanation:<\/strong> The word “well” in this hyphen-free phrase is an adjective, as in “He is a well man.”<\/p>\n In contrast, the word “well” is an adverb in the hyphenated modifier “well-qualified”.<\/p>\n In other words, “well” is modifying the word “qualified”, which on its own acts as an adjective, as in “qualified participants”.<\/p>\n One should typically NOT use a hyphen between an adverb and an adjective when together they form an adverb-adjective modifier of a noun.<\/p>\n However, when an adverb can also act as an adjective, and “well” is just such a word, one must put a hyphen between the adverb and the adjective to form the adverb-adjective modifier of a noun and thereby avoid possible confusion about whether the first word is an adverb or an adjective.<\/p>\n The word “more” is like the word “well” in that “more” can be either an adjective or an adverb.<\/p>\n Solution:<\/strong> The word “well” acts as an ADJECTIVE in “well qualified buyers” — with a space between “well” and “qualified” — so that each of the words “well” and “qualified” individually modifies the noun “buyers”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I saw the phrase with the hyphen last night in an Acura advertisement on television. Problem: These two phrases have different meanings, but many people do not appreciate the difference. Explanation: The phrase “well qualified buyers” without the hyphen is equivalent to “well, qualified buyers” — with a comma and a space between the word…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6,3,33,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adjectives","category-adverbs","category-common-english-blunders","category-hyphens","category-versus"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nThese two phrases have different meanings, but many people do not appreciate the difference.<\/p>\n
\nThe phrase “well qualified buyers” without the hyphen is equivalent to “well, qualified buyers” — with a comma and a space between the word “well” and the word “qualified”.<\/p>\n\n
\nThe word “well” acts as an ADVERB in “well-qualified buyers” — with a hyphen between “well” and “qualified” — to form an adverb-adjective modifier of the noun “buyers”.<\/p>\n