Question

The night time classes are for English language learners?
Choose the option that best corrects the answer
A) No change
B) The night-time classes are for English language learners.
C) The night-time classes are for English-language learners.
D) The night-time classes are for English language learners.

Answer 1

Hint: Hyphen is a punctuation mark, which is used to join two or more groups of words to make a combined meaning.

Complete answer:
Hyphen is one of the most commonly used punctuation marks in the English language. Hyphens are used when the words act as an adjective before the noun. However, if the noun comes first, the hyphen is not used. Similarly, like, father-in-law. Here, these words together make a combined meaning.

Let us examine the given options to find the correct meaning

Option A is not correct because it does not justify the above rules. Option B, ‘The night-time classes are for English language learners is incorrect because there is no hyphen between English and language. Option C, ‘The night-time classes are for English-language learners’ is a correct option because here the hyphen is used as adjective compounds, like, night-time and English-language. Option D, ‘The night-time classes are for English language-learners’ is an incorrect option because the hyphen is coming before the noun i.e. language-learners.

Note:
Hyphens are also used to join a prefix to another word, especially when the prefix ends with a vowel (a, e, i, o, u). For example: co-operate or anti-nuclear. Similarly, they can be used with compound numbers like, two-third. Hyphens are often confused with dashes while dashes are used to create emphasis in the sentence, for example, she might come - who knows.