suspended hyphen constructs

[cybmole]

not a sigil question per se, but as this as a great place for expert typesetting type advice...

phrases like
bell- book- andcandle

which I just encountered in a retail book
( the sentence is: Well, I don’t want any of this bell-book-andcandle, incense-burning, medieval rubbish. )

or more generally, word1- word2 -andword3

crop up now & again & retail quality books.

It looks wrong to me not to have a space between "and" & the final word, but is it actually valid & not sloppy proofreading ? It is an awkward question to google.

& ideally is this a situation for using dash, endash, or emdash & with or without spaces ?

more examples here:
http://editingandwritingservices.com/suspended-hyphens/

[theducks]

andcandle, andword are simply misspelled

I flunked High School English (all them odd rules made my head spin), but I think suspend in this usage indicates something repetitive is assumed

Using your link:

Pre-war and Post-war
Two–wheel drive and four-wheel drive

[DiapDealer]

I've seen it "pre- and post-war."

I don't know about the "and" with no space between it and the next word. Can honestly say I've never encountered it.

[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 that 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

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by cybmole

or more generally, word1- word2 -andword3

This is wrong and was simply missed by the editors. They are only human and I find typos in many "high quality" books.

[cybmole]

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

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.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by cybmole

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.

Most likely both books are based on the same digital source that was scanned from the original.

Originally Posted by cybmole

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 ?

AFAIK, noun phrases usually need to be hyphenated when they're used as adjectives.

For example:

- in a matter-of-fact tone
- a head-to-toe inspection

[cybmole]

publishers still use scanning ? - no wonder retail epub quality is so bad??? - I would have thought the'd have their originals in some computer format which they could run through e-book making software I think this novel was originally published circa 2000. new enough for authors to be using word processors ?