Investor 2, I would go for "3-foot-deep," for reasons of logic. Otherwise, "deep" would be directly modifying "hole," rather than spelling out that the hole has a specific depth of three feet. Suppose, for example, you were to say:
"The deep hole is behind the...building."
Similarly, I would opt for "200-square-foot" building.
Checking with my Fowler English Usage, I see that there is no consensus among grammarians about the use of the hyphen, except on one point, namely: "the hyphen is not an ornament, but an aid to understanding." Fowler goes on to say, among other things, that "the primary function of the hyphen is to indicate that two or more words are to be read together as a single word" (as in stick-in-the-mud, or, as, I would suggest, 3-foot-deep). He is also emphatic about not leaving out ANY hyphen in a string like the following: "three-quarter-hour intervals," or "two-year-old horses."
And so forth. So I stick by my recommendation. :-)
jbe |
