Evidence-Based

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Dan Gaze from Rochester, Minnesota.

Hi, Dan. Welcome to the program.

Hello.

Thanks for having me.

How can we help?

Well, I do a lot of writing in the research world, and we do a lot of protocol writing.

And it seems that a lot of our work revolves around using the phrase evidence-based.

And it always comes to me unhyphenated, and I change it to hyphen between evidence and based.

And I have no idea why I do that.

It just looks like it’s the right thing to do visually.

And typically that’s how I have gotten through undergraduate and graduate school and now a career by just looking at words.

I kind of am an English savant.

I have no idea why anything works the way it does.

I just know what looks right.

Okay.

So that’s basically the question.

And I know like certain phrases have the hyphen, first class, low budget, things like that.

But evidence-based bounces back and forth off my desk,

And I always put it in, and usually it stays because I have the last say on it.

Well, I would say that your instincts are right on.

That’s exactly what I would do.

That phrase there is functioning as an adjective before the noun, correct?

Like sports-related writing?

Yes.

I mean, the rules can get really complicated here,

But I think the easy rule is just to lean toward that hyphen

If you’ve got a phrasal adjective like that.

So court-hyphen-imposed deadline.

Sports-hyphen-related writing, as you said.

I think where some people get tripped up is when you’re using an adverb

And then another adjective before, like hotly contested race.

You wouldn’t want the hyphen there.

But I would lean toward your way of doing it.

I would too, and I think evidence-based should take the hyphen even when it’s after the verb.

Really?

Yeah, my research is evidence-based.

I would say that evidence-based needs the hyphen.

And you’ll find that most style guides will say,

That’s probably your best course of action.

The difficulty is that in English in general, we are tending to drop our hyphens.

And decade by decade, more and more style guides are saying that the hyphens are optional

Or they’re suggesting that words that are really strong compounds that go well together

Should be just made one word and the hyphen should be removed altogether.

Like high school.

Yeah, an ice cream.

Evidence-based isn’t there yet because we clearly have a noun

And we have a participle,

And those two are probably never going to merge into a single word.

Like no one, so now it looks like Noonie.

Noonie, Noonie, Noonie.

I can’t stand it.

Yeah, do you get flack for doing that if you put the hyphen in there, in evidence-based?

No, not at all, because usually I’m the last one to submit it,

And then it goes in front of a board.

So they must seem to think that it looks okay and typically gets approved.

And it’s not even that big of a deal.

It’s not the crux of research, but in health care these days,

It seems to be that most things need to be evidence-based before they can be put into action,

Or the reason that they are put into action is because they’re evidence-based.

So it just occurs so often, and I always look.

I try not to look it up because I just go with what looks right, and so far, so good.

Yeah, I think you’re fine, and I would encourage you to start, if you don’t already have one,

An institutional style guide where you formalize some of these decisions that you’re making

And try to get your colleagues to agree that this is the way that you all go.

You’ll save yourself a lot of editing in the long run.

Yeah.

Cool, Dan. Thanks for calling.

Yeah, thank you.

Take care. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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