One of the vagaries of working in contract publishing is that the client has final say over content so will sometimes tell you to change things because they know best, even though they have hired you for your expertise in the field.
Yesterday, the client asked us to add a hyphen to “in store” in the cover line “Save £110 in store today”. This is not a hill I would be prepared to die on, and it is perhaps arguable either way (at least, I wouldn’t assert dogmatically that it is incorrect, as the account manager did, in her typically noisy and hysterical fashion), but the main case against is that we’ve
never had a hyphen in that cover line (which is on every issue) so bringing it up now is really just an exercise in the client asserting their authority because they have to be seen to justify their existence.
The editor ultimately wrote an email back to the client, taking the “blind them with science” approach by citing complex and wordy grammar rules. And that was the bit that made me cringe.
I think it’s quite simple: a compound modifier is not usually hyphenated when it comes <after> the noun, except where required for clarity.
Although I get why the editor took the approach she did - you’ve got to put the client in their place sometimes.
