The dash between words

Question

I did a IELTS listening and I filled in a space with "keep fit studio", but the answer is "keep-fit studio", so in English, how to figure out the usage of "-"?

Answer 1

Expanding on what user178049 has mentioned, "keep fit" is a phrase that describes the noun "studio". More importantly, it is a compound modifier, since it has more than one word.

A compound modifier is a compound of two or more attributive words: That is, more than one word that together modify a noun. Compound modifiers are grammatically equivalent to single-word modifiers, and can be used in combination with other modifiers.

The constituent words of compound modifiers need not be adjectives; combinations of nouns, determiners, and other parts of speech are also common.

A hyphen is used to join the individual words in a compound modifier. This is to ensure that the compound modifiers operate collectively on the noun that follows, and to avoid readers misinterpreting.

Let's use a different example to demonstrate this:

He owns a small appliance factory.

Left unhyphenated, the above sentence could be interpreted ambiguously in two ways:

• He owns an appliance factory, and that factory is small in size or revenue.
• He owns a factory that makes small appliances.

To resolve the ambiguity, a hyphen can be introduced to clarify that it is the second interpretation:

He owns a small-appliance factory.

The hyphen makes it clearer that the factory makes small appliances.

The same rules are applied in the case of the example you provided: "keep fit studio", which is preferably written as "keep-fit studio" which means a studio to keep fit.

Notice in the preceding sentence I mentioned "studio in which one can keep fit", and I didn't hyphenate "keep fit". This is because in this sentence, the phrase "keep fit" is the predicate of the sentence, it is no longer a compound modifier describing "studio".