When should you hyphenate square footage?
Dear editors,
Square footage is one of the most common hyphenation puzzles Curbed and Eater editors deal with, whether you’re writing about restaurants or homes. Many of you are total experts on how to write about square footage and other dimensions, but just in case, here’s a refresher.
Always use figures for dimensions.
That means that even 3 square feet should be expressed in numbers. Same goes for heights: He is 5 feet 8 inches tall.
When square footage comes before the word it’s modifying, hyphenate it!
We know that multiple-word adjectives are generally hyphenated just before a noun (a brand-new restaurant, a light-filled home), and the same goes for square footage.
Hyphenated examples:
This three-bedroom in Charlottesville, Virginia, has so much to offer within its 1,581-square-foot space.
The kitchen opens up to a 140-square-foot living room with reclaimed wood accents.
The 5-foot-6-inch woman.
No hyphens needed here:
Measuring in at 400 square feet and currently located in Maui, Iki Hau’oli Hale uses two separate trailers.
The Warehouse District’s newest bar will have 7,000 square feet of outdoor seating.
He is 6 feet 6 inches.
Foot or feet?
You may have noticed a pattern above: hyphenated adjective forms use the singular word “foot,” even if you’re talking about multiple feet. Otherwise, feet is the appropriate word.
Let’s talk about “and a half”
Finally, a reminder that “and a half” phrases do not need to be hyphenated. That means a house has three and a half bathrooms, the movie is two and a half hours long, and she ate five and a half hamburgers. These are noun phrases.
When should you hyphenate “and a half”? When it’s used as part of a compound adjective before a noun. So it’s a three-and-a-half-bathroom house, and a two-and-a-half-hour movie.
Copy News
This week, we added bitcoin, oenophile, pot-au-feu, galbi, brewhouse, and tail light.
A reminder to Eater: Articles in restaurant names should be lowercase, even for short names like the Beehive.
In other news, Donald Trump used an en dash for some reason. An illustrated history of autocorrect. And an essay about the fate of handwriting.
Have a good week!
Emma