Okay English speakers, buck up. Hyphenated items in a list? Piece of cake.
Consider the sentence, "I have short-term, medium-term, and long-term projects."
(Yes, a serial comma. But focus. Hyphens, okay?)
If you wanted to avoid repetition in this sentence, you'd write it as follows:
"I have short-, medium-, and long-term projects."
No kidding. The hyphens, you see, tie the modifiers (short, medium, long) to the common noun (term). This is how the sentence makes sense. Consider the same sentence sans hyphens:
"I have short, medium, and long-term projects."
That sentence literally says, I have short projects, I have medium projects, and I have long-term projects. Which is not the same as our sample sentence, where we're talking about when the projects take place, rather than how long they take. And: what in hell is a medium project?
Without the hyphens, short and medium could be substituted with any damn noun:
"I have love, peas, and long-term projects."
The hyphens are needed. They are not weird. If you have any questions, I will happily address them with due immovability on this matter in the comments.
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