When you use a hyphen to connect two words and use those words as an adjective, it is called a compound modifier.
For example:
Incorrect: The sweet smelling cake made my stomach growl.
This sentence is rather confusing. Is the sweet actually smelling the cake? There needs to be a hyphen should be inserted between sweet and smelling, so the reader understands that the cake smells sweet:
Incorrect: The sweet-smelling cake made my stomach growl.
Here are more example sentences showing the compound modifier connected by hyphens:
The narrow-minded man wouldn’t listen to my opinions.
The well-behaved girl made her mother proud.
Do you have a short-haired cat?
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