Blogging from A to Z - today's words are hyphen and HAAP Ibn Farrago

Welcome to the letter H! First I'm going to discuss the hyphen and when to insert it between words. The simplest situation is compound words used as an adjective before a noun.

An example you'll see often is "crude-oil-processing plant". You can't equally call it a crude plant or an oil plant, so these are not coordinate adjectives (see April 3rd's post).

An example from my MG manuscript MIGHTY MIKE AND THE INTERGALACTIC CANDY DISPENSER comes on the first page. "According to The List of Chumps to be Pounded After School, today was hang-Mike-like-a-piñata Wednesday." None of those words describe Wednesday alone.

These combinations can be made with several word forms - nouns, adverbs, adjectives, and heck throw a conjunction in the mix too! I could give examples all day. Instead, comment on your favorite or most confusing hyphenated adjective and I'll get on to more fun stuff.

This is HAAP Ibn Farrago, a sabino Arabian stallion. His nickname was Max and we were lucky enough to own him for 4 years. He came to us as a difficult-to-handle (ooh, another example) stallion that didn't know how to behave properly around other horses and was barely ride-able.

Sabino is a gene that gives horses "color", like tobiano and overo which most people associate with Paints. Sabinos usually have more white on their faces and legs, with kind of a lacy pattern at the edges. Max was considered a minimal sabino.

Max is also the sire of the filly Daught, pictured along with her mom Ginger yesterday. Now she got some crazy coloring!

He had some amazing babies and became a solid endurance horse although I left it up to my husband to handle him at competitions. Sadly, we lost him to a severe colic. We still have his second-to-last (omg, they're everywhere!) daughter, the filly Csavannah, pictured on April 3rd's post.

R.I.P. Max, we miss you.