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I recently wrote a review with this sentence in it: "The build up was great."

Does this seem correct, or should it be hyphenated to become build-up?

Thanks.

Hi there, I was just browsing the International Grammar Forum out of curiosity and saw your post. My feeling is that for the purposes of conveying your meaning in your review, "build-up" is more likely to be accepted as grammatically correct. (I read your full review before posting this response). Good luck!

Even better than "build-up" would be "buildup." There's a process compound words go through over time where they start as separate words, then acquire a hyphen, and finally are joined as a single word.