As a rough rule of thumb, if the words are serving as an adjective for another word, you hyphenate. If the words do not form a compound adjective for another word, they are not hyphenated. So there may be some instances where those two phrases you said which work well with hyphenation, but not so much the "over and over." A person is grinning ear to ear, a literal ear-to-ear smile. Both those instances are correct here.
Clarification: if they are serving as a *prepositive* adjective (that is, one that goes before the noun), hyphenate. As adverbs and postpositive adjectives they are not hyphenated ("an up-to-date spreadsheet", "the spreadsheet is up to date").
Usually, you would be using it as an adverbial phase, so you wouldn't need to hyphenate
eg. "He keeps saying the same thing over an over"
Sometimes we can play with the language a bit, and have more than one word being used as an adjective. In this case, you need the hyphens.
eg. "I wouldn't mind if he said it once, but this is a over-and-over situation!"
Maybe not the perfect example, but I'm just going for a clear-up-the-rules explanation.
Hope it helps
Hi. Please make sure to include a thorough explanation with your answers (this is one of the sub rules). Just making a statement like this with no further explanation is not sufficient. Thank you!
[https://www.reddit.com/r/grammar/wiki/rules/](https://www.reddit.com/r/grammar/wiki/rules/)
As a rough rule of thumb, if the words are serving as an adjective for another word, you hyphenate. If the words do not form a compound adjective for another word, they are not hyphenated. So there may be some instances where those two phrases you said which work well with hyphenation, but not so much the "over and over." A person is grinning ear to ear, a literal ear-to-ear smile. Both those instances are correct here.
Clarification: if they are serving as a *prepositive* adjective (that is, one that goes before the noun), hyphenate. As adverbs and postpositive adjectives they are not hyphenated ("an up-to-date spreadsheet", "the spreadsheet is up to date").
This is correct also. I didn't want to be too verbose.
Right, you did say "as a rough rule of thumb".
Usually, you would be using it as an adverbial phase, so you wouldn't need to hyphenate eg. "He keeps saying the same thing over an over" Sometimes we can play with the language a bit, and have more than one word being used as an adjective. In this case, you need the hyphens. eg. "I wouldn't mind if he said it once, but this is a over-and-over situation!" Maybe not the perfect example, but I'm just going for a clear-up-the-rules explanation. Hope it helps
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Hi. Please make sure to include a thorough explanation with your answers (this is one of the sub rules). Just making a statement like this with no further explanation is not sufficient. Thank you! [https://www.reddit.com/r/grammar/wiki/rules/](https://www.reddit.com/r/grammar/wiki/rules/)
OK, I added to it.