I saw this confusing hyphen format used during a local news report regarding the late Arnold Palmer’s age. According to this news station, “Arnold Palmer was 87-years-old”. I thought this looked strange — okay, it looked weird — so I decided to do a little fact-checking.

Turns out it’s weird because it’s not right! According to the Grammar Book, a hyphen between the numeric age, “years” and “old” words is not necessary. Why? The word “years” is plural, which is correct. When you’re writing ab...