student asking question

Why are "11 hours" and "16-hour" written differently? One with a hyphen and one with plural.

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

"16-hour" is hyphenated because it is combining "16" and "hour" to be used as a singular adjective in this sentence to describe the duration of the flight. In contrast, "11 hours" is not hyphenated because it is just providing an amount of something and it is not being used as an adjective to describe the length of the flight. So the hyphenation of these phrases just depends on what part of speech they are being used as in the sentence. Here's an example of a sentence where time is being used as two different parts of speech: Ex: The meeting was three hours long. Ex: It was a three-hour long meeting. Hope that helps!

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