English Lesson: Hyphenated Adjectives

I went to the diner the other day. A diner is a 24-hour restaurant and it’s open 7 days a week.. Have you ever been to a diner? They serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner food all day long.

In English, we have certain expressions with numbers that are used as nouns and some that are used as adjectives. Let’s take a look at these today. Compare these two sentences:

• The restaurant is open 24 hours
• It is a 24-hour restaurant.

When we use the number as a noun, then we need to also use the plural form of noun that follows:

• The diner is open 24 hours every day.
• Jack works 5 days a week.
• The work contract was for 10 weeks.

When the number-noun combination is used as an adjective, we don’t use the plural form of the noun:

• The diner is a 24-hour restaurant every day
• Most people in the USA have a 5-day work week.
• She got a 10-week work contract.

Please be careful not to use the plural form of the noun when you are using the number-noun adjective:

• She got a 10-week work contract. Not, She got a 10-weeks work contract.

Thanks for studying today. I hope you have a short work week!

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