Family Owned or Family-Owned?

philipanderson · Post by **philipanderson** » Fri Apr 25, 2014 1:51 am

Hi

I can't conclude whether to write 'family-owned businesses' or 'family owned businesses'.

1 - There's a standing request on Constant Content that says 'family owned businesses' consistently.

2 - MS Word doesn't seem to mind either version.

3 - Articles online seem to go either way. Examples:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_business - uses 'family owned'

http://www.inc.com/tom-searcy/success-t ... anies.html - uses 'family-owned'.

4 - Editors here at CC have accepted 'family owned' until today, when an article came back to me to change to 'family-owned'.

So I'm now left with articles in my portfolio with a mixture of 'family owned' and 'family-owned'.

If this is one of those 'it works both ways' things, then I don't mind. I'm happy to use whichever format gets past the editor reviewing my article (although that will, of course, be trial and error). But my instincts tell me that there is a right and wrong here, and I want to make sure.

Help!