September 25th, 2009
Hyphens, Netflix, and a Million Bucks
“[A] seven-person team of statisticians, machine-learning experts and computer engineers …. was the longtime frontrunner in the contest…. The Netflix contest has been widely followed because its lessons could extend well beyond improving movie picks.” – Steve Lohr, “Netflix Awards $1 Million Prize and Starts a New Contest,” New York Times, September 21, 2009
Finally…! Someone who knows how to use a hyphen! Lohr hyphenates “seven-person ” and “machine-learning” because these two-word phrases come before the nouns they describe – “team” and “experts.” There’d be no hyphen if either two-word phrase came after the noun: “They were experts in machine learning.”
For more tips on how to use hyphens correctly, see Write It Well’s book Professional Writing Skills: A Self-Paced Training Program.