Well-qualified or well qualified?
Hello,

I would appreciate it if anyone could explain to me why do we need to use a hyphen in "well-funded" but not in "well qualified" in the following sentence.I know that there is a rule that says: whenever compound adjectives are formed from well+participle, we need to hyphenate them, but in the following sentence "well qualified" has not been hyphenated. Why?

"For example, a company owner will need well qualified and competent staff, and a well-funded education system can provide such employees."

Question

Well-qualified or well qualified?
Hello,

I would appreciate it if anyone could explain to me why do we need to use a hyphen in "well-funded" but not in "well qualified" in the following sentence.I know that there is a rule that says: whenever compound adjectives are formed from well+participle, we need to hyphenate them, but in the following sentence "well qualified" has not been hyphenated. Why?

"For example, a company owner will need well qualified and competent staff, and a well-funded education system can provide such employees."

Answer

Hi Adib, in your example sentence both 'well-qualified' and 'well-funded' require the hyphen because they come before the noun. Compare these 2 sentences: The staff were not well qualified/We need more well-qualified staff. In the first sentence 'well qualified' is not hyphenated because 'well' is an adverb that describes 'qualified'. Hope that helps!

Answer

Stephen explains it very well.  My take is a hyphen is rarely used and only when it is not clear which adjectives are describing which nouns.  So in your example "well funded education system" makes complete sense as it is, it cannot mean "well funded-education system" or indeed "well funded education-system".

I have spotted that the hyphen is used differently in the US to the rest of the English world.  So twenty-four is used in the States but the rest of us use twenty four for 24.