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RamsesThePigeon t1_iyszs99 wrote

Reply to comment by Garlien in TIL In verb form, the word "piss" is mentioned in the more literal versions of the Bible. by triad1996

"More literal" precedes a noun, meaning that it needs to be hyphenated if it's meant to be read as a standalone adjective. This would be true with or without the presence of the word "the." Since the hyphen was omitted, the former interpretation – "a greater number of literal versions of the Bible" – becomes the "correct" one, making the word "the" a grammatical mistake.

Remember, context – which so many people cite without really understanding – is derived from structure (punctuation, mainly) first, grammar second, and definition last.

The most compelling examples stand on their own.

The most-compelling examples stand on their own.

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Garlien t1_iyt4rsc wrote

source? Nobody writes like that. You're just being needlessly pedantic.

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RamsesThePigeon t1_iyt5jjs wrote

>Use a hyphen to join two or more words serving as a single adjective before a noun.

Source

This is pretty basic stuff... and if you genuinely think that it's uncommon, that's probably a sign that you need to read more books and fewer Internet comments.

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Garlien t1_iytc5mu wrote

I've seen it used often for some compounds adjectives like well-known or chocolate-covered from that page, but never as a blanket rule across all compound adjectives. Most hyphenation rules they listed have exceptions anyway, so I'd argue that more-literal isn't a necessarily hyphenated adjective.

Either way, the OP is correct enough that there's no reasonable way to misinterpret it due to "the" appearing before the adjectives. "The more translations" (omitting the "literal") doesn't make sense, "More translations" would be ambiguous.

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triad1996 OP t1_iytrvw0 wrote

Believe you me, I'm a dunderhead when it comes to the fine points of grammar. If I typed a grammatically correct sentence, it's purely by accident.

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