: Are compound verbs frowned upon? After finding out that adverbs were, to use hyperbole, about equivalent to a death wish for the quality of a piece, I was wondering about other bits and pieces

After finding out that adverbs were, to use hyperbole, about equivalent to a death wish for the quality of a piece, I was wondering about other bits and pieces of writing convention.

Are hyphenated verbs generally frowned upon? I feel as if I use them far too often, saying things like

Learning the intricacies of bike-riding...

and

He had absolutely no skill in dog-walking.

Is it almost always better to use "of riding a bike" and "in walking dogs"? Or are they generally allowed?

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@Berryessa137

Everything is permissible, not everything is beneficial.

There is no one to say if writing a certain way not forbidden by rules of grammar books is right or wrong.

If you wish to see if words feel "natural" (I suppose this is what you want), then I recommend stopping. Wait a day, not thinking of what you have written. Look at your manuscript. Don't think about what it says, actually read it. I guarantee, anything that made you feel like a master wordsmith while writing will make you feel like a blasted fool when reading. If anything looks off, remove it, let another take its place. Repeat until you are sick of it.

As for verbs, if it is not in your dictionary, hyphenate it. If it looks "wrong" when re-reading, change it to what you feel is "right".

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@Reiling826

As with adverbs, the key is "far too often".

There's nothing wrong with using a gerund (riding) with a modifier (bike), although I wouldn't use the hyphen to connect them. Everything's "allowed", if it works.

But if you yourself feel you're using them too often, you probably are, so you should give them a careful look. You may find they're less obtrusive when you remove the hyphen, but if you don't, you should probably take some out.

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: Are compound verbs frowned upon? After finding out that adverbs were, to use hyperbole, about equivalent to a death wish for the quality of a piece, I was wondering about other bits and pieces

More posts by @Alves689

: If the novel is good enough to get published, it won't matter how old you are. You'll just be that much cooler. I've been trying to get published since 12, like youâ€”well actually 11â€”and

: Writing a character that has many names So one of my main characters uses three different names throughout the story. There's his nickname Warlock, his name Andreas, and his shorthand name Dre.

: Can you do a "selective" word count in Scrivener? When I use Scrivener I tend to have quite a deep hierarchy of documents. Often, I'll use a child document for notes that I will write up

: APA Headings- Frequency How often should you use a heading? Are there any guidelines or limitations to using headings too often (i.e., every paragraph, every other paragraph, etc.)?

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