Unlike apostrophes hyphens can play a genuine and important role in parsing sentences. This has come my way:
Amazing German Designed Cat Climbing Furniture
Wirth appropriate hyphenation it could mean any of:
1. Amazing German Designed Cat Climbing Furniture
An amazing German designed a cat* while climbing furniture.
*It could be a toy or model cat.
An amazing German designed a cat that is climbing furniture.
2. Amazing German-Designed Cat Climbing Furniture.
An amazing cat designed in Germany is climbing furniture.
3. Amazing German Designed Cat-Climbing Furniture.
An amazing German designed furniture on which cats can climb.
4. Amazing German-Designed Cat-Climbing Furniture.
Amazing furniture designed in Germany on which cats can climb.
The link shows that we are looking at 4.
This incredible line of handcrafted designer cat climbing furniture comes from German company Goldtatze, which seems to translate to “Gold Paw”.
I have mentioned the importance of hyphens before, here and here.
Image from the quoted website.
Comments