Quote:
Originally Posted by Doitsu
IMHO, the first sentence is not an example of a suspended hyphen. The first phrase "bell, book and candle" is a Catholic term that hat should be written as a compound with hyphens between each element, because it's used as an adjective:
bell-book-and-candle, incense-burning, medieval rubbish
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i have 2 versions of that book - a purchased kindle version and an epub library loan, it is the same in both versions, which makes me wonder if it was deliberate.
more likely I suppose, it was wrong in the hardback/paperback & left that way, unless it was done for emphasis given the compound nature of the sentence ?
there are 3 - what do you call them? - adjectival clauses, describing 3 types of "rubbish" & the bell book candle bit is one of 3 such. so maybe that is why the words need to be hyphen linked ?
( I know that the usual catholic phrase is:
bell, book and candle , & the context here is that the speaker IS talking about exorcism- the book is the novel
Midwinter Of The Spirit by Phil Rickman )
I think it reads better like the quoted poster says:
Well, I don’t want any of this bell-book-and-candle, incense-burning, medieval rubbish.
the e-book sentence is: Well, I don’t want any of this bell-book-andcandle, incense-burning, medieval rubbish.