(44^44 x 66^66x99^99) में इकाई के स्थान पर कौन-सा अंक होगा?
Answers
first sergeants
sergeants major
sergeants first class
colonel generals [Russian]
lieutenant generals
lieutenant colonels
apprentice, journeyman, and master mechanics
deputy librarians
deputy assistant secretaries of state
The possessive of a hyphenated compound is created by attaching an apostrophe -s to the end of the compound itself: my daughter-in-law's car, a friend of mine's car. To create the possessive of pluralized and compounded forms, a writer is wise to avoid the apostrophe -s form and use an "of" phrase (the "post genitive") instead: the meeting of the daughters-in-law, the schedule of half-moons. Otherwise, the possessive form becomes downright weird: the daughters-in-law's meeting, friends of mine's cars.
One of the most difficult decisions to make about possessives and plurals of compound words occurs when you can't decide whether the first noun in a compound structure is acting as ide inflation
X-ray
Notice that African American contains no hyphen, but Italian-American does. There are no hard and fast rules about this, and social conventions change. (There is no hyphen in French Canadian.) Some groups have insisted that they do not want to be known as "hyphenated Americans" and resist, therefore, the use of a hyphen, preferring that the word "American" be used as an adjective. Some resources even suggest that a term like Italian-American should be used only when the individual thus referred to has parents of two different nationalities. That's probably a stretch, but a writer must be aware that sensibilities can be aroused when using nationalities of any description. Consistency within a document is also important.
Suspended Compounds*
With a series of nearly identical compounds, we sometimes delay the final term of the final term until the last instance, allowing the hyphen to act as a kind of place holder, as in
The third- and fourth-grade teachers met with the parents.
Both full- and part-time employees will get raises this year.
We don't see many 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children around here.
Be careful not to overuse this feature of the hyphen; readers have to wait until that final instance to know what you're talking about, and that can be annoying.
FOR ADDITIONAL HELP
The Chicago Manual of Style contains an extensive section devoted to compounded modifiers and nouns. That book's table of compounds categorizes compounds into various types, and helps us discover principles of spelling (and some really strange exceptions). Styles of compounding words change over the years, however, and writers might even find different versions in different dictionaries. The Chicago Manual is especially helpful because it tries to define the principles by which such decisions are made.
Quiz
Quiz on Compound Nouns and Modifiers
*The term "suspended compound" is borrowed from New York Public Library Writer's Guide to Style and Usage HarperCollins: New York. 1994. p. 416. Cited with permission.
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