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Grammar girl, here I'm Mignon Foggerty, and you can think of me as your friendly guide to the English language, writing history, rules, and cool stuff.

Today, I have a quick and dirty tip about using hyphens in ages.

And another segment about something called the emphatic this.

That's when you say something like, I listened to this podcast that covers language.

But first, let's do hyphens.

A lot of people get confused about when to use hyphens when writing ages.

And I think it's because sometimes in ages and noun, sometimes in ages and adjective that comes before a noun and modifies it,

and sometimes in age is an adjective that comes after a noun.

First, we'll talk about when you do hyphenate an age.

You do it when the age is acting like a noun,

and when the age is an adjective that comes before the noun and modifies the noun.

In this example, the age 70-year-old is used as a noun and you hyphenate it.

That 70-year-old with the purple hoodie loves Justin Bieber.

Just as you'd say that woman with the purple hoodie loves Justin Bieber with woman is the noun,

the age 70-year-old can take the place of woman.

When an age is a noun like that, you hyphenate it.

And here's an example of an age that comes before the noun it modifies.

You hyphenate here too.

My eight-year-old neighbor wrote a poem about commas for National Grammar Day.

In that example, eight-year-old is an adjective that describes the noun, neighbor, my eight-year-old neighbor,

and eight-year-old is hyphenated.

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