With thoughts and insults by my dear friend Lesley
(yes, I have work to do on this page too)

Note to my demented editor: Hi!

Below are some rules for hyphens (or dashes) but it must be said that  there is a trend away from hyphens except when it changes the semantics of the  sentence (see the wikipedia entry, the second one below, very informative) as in  man eating shark (a man eating a shark for din din) and a man-eating shark—the  two words are hyphenated to indicate a compound modifier, that is to say, the  shark is a man-eater. So to answer your questions about the flesh and blood  bit—sadly there are no hard and fast rules for the dashing dash as used by her—I would not have put the dashes in flesh and blood, except, as I have said,  if I were saying, for examp, to me, she was like a real flesh-and-blood sister.  Compound modifier of sister. But if you read the experts on the uses of dashes,  be they ens or ems or hard hyphens, you will find that they do not strictly  agree, and that the “rules” such as they are have evolved. I support your  demented-editor drift, although the singular, none possessive use of editor  does make the meaning clear. But yes, I do think that, given that you yourself  are not william safire or a teacher of english, you only open a path for someone  to start busting you on YOUR grammar and punctuation, no doubt gleefully. You  will be hoist by your own petard.  I have said it once, and I will say it again: be very careful with your  pronouncements on writing, and definately on grammar (and since I found out you  didn’t know your imply from your infer, I would not get uppity about usage  either). So just don’t talk about rules, or even correct english; you could  say the PREFERRED english is….  English grammar is as vast and complicated and controversial  as discussions on the talmud. Which is why a publication or a pub  house (my publishers for example, who want everything to be consistent  throughout the whole range of travel books) will have a style sheet that  the author will adhere to. Strunk and White’s is considered the standard for  american, but an English don from Oxford would feel compelled to edit the  hell out of that book, and write outraged notes in the margins. 

That said please see below, the university of texas’ style sheet on  hyphenating nouns. By their reckoning you would write will-o-the-wisp,  one-on-one, and yes, even flesh-and-blood could squeeze in, altho and is a  not preposition—showing direction, location, or time. These are hardworking, or  hard-working words, and and just kind of lies there.Plus it ain’t mentioned in  the list I found on the web: A prepositional  phrase (http://www.arts.uottawa.ca/writcent/hypergrammar/phrfunc.html#prepositional phrase)  is made up of the preposition, its object and any associated adjectives (http://www.arts.uottawa.ca/writcent/hypergrammar/adjectve.html#adjective)   or adverbs
(http://www.arts.uottawa.ca/writcent/hypergrammar/adverbs.html#adverb) . 

A prepositional phrase can function as a noun, an adjective, or an adverb. The  most common prepositions are “about,” “above,” “across,” “after,” “against,”  “along,” “among,” “around,” “at,” “before,” “behind,” “below,” “beneath,”  “beside,” “between,” “beyond,” “but,” “by,” “despite,” “down,” “during,”  “except,” “for,” “from,” “in,” “inside,” “into,” “like,” “near,” “of,” “off,”  “on,” “onto,” “out,” “outside,” “over,” “past,” “since,” “through,”  “throughout,” “till,” “to,” “toward,” “under,” “underneath,” “until,” “up,”  “upon,” “with,” “within,” and “without.” See that? No and. I feel that I have only confused you more, but this  is a grey territory, and one that has been mapped in many different ways, like  the old goldrush maps that people made up out of whole cloth—I’m thinking of  the poor old Donner Party who were in search of a non-existant short-cut on the  strength of a map drawn by a guy who’d never actually travelled it. Okay, let me  leave you to your reading. Oh, let me leave you with these quotes on the devil  dash from an article on writing for scientific journals:  “ The obvious purpose of grammatical rules is to facilitate clear  communication. When rules of grammar do not serve this purpose, they should  be disregarded’ Scientific English, by Robert Day ‘The hyphen has a number of uses, most of them  confusing’—Ibid  ‘One must regard the hyphen as a blemish to be avoided as far as  possible’ ….’you may run them together or leave them apart, except when  nature revolts’ .Winston Churchill ‘If you take the hyphen seriously, you will surely go mad’.  John Benbow (emphasis mine) This  is the texas thingee.

HYPHENS The  hyphen is used to link the parts of some compound words.  It also links the parts of a word begun  on one line and finished on the next.  Consult a dictionary if you are unsure about how to hyphenate any given  word.

1.    Use a hyphen to link the parts of  compound nouns that begin with the prefixes “ex-,” “self-,” “great-” or that end  with the suffix “–elect.” ex-partner                              self-esteem                           president-elect

2.    Use a hyphen to link the parts of  compound nouns that include a prepositional phrase.  son-in-law   man-of-war  jack-in-the-box

3.    Use a hyphen to link prefixes with  proper nouns or adjectives.  pro-American  post-impressionist NOTE:  Many compound words are not  hyphenated.  Some are two separate  words (tennis court), but some are written as a single word  (basketball).

4.    Use a hyphen to link the parts of a  compound adjective when it precedes the noun.  coal-mining equipment  grease-stained jeans NOTE:  Do not use a hyphen if the adjective  follows the noun or if the first modifier is an adverb ending in -ly  (quickly heated soup).

5.    Use a hyphen to link parts of a fraction  used as an adjective.  two-thirds empty one-half finished NOTE:  Omit the hyphen if the fraction is used  as a noun.  One half of the bus was empty.

6.    Use a hyphen to link the parts of a  compound number between twenty-one and ninety-nine.  forty-five seats                     thirty-four years

7.    Use a hyphen when a word is divided at  the end of a line.  Place a hyphen  between syllables only.  Do not  hyphenate a word if doing so would leave just one letter on either line.  If a word already contains a hyphen,  divide it only at the hyphen. Today many people are still interested in the trapper’s  indepen- dent life style. Everyone seems to be interested in electronic gadgetry and  state- of-the-art computers.

8.    Use hyphens to distinguish between two  words that are spelled similarly and might be confused.  m-e-e-t is not the same as m-e-a-t

9.    Use a hyphen to further clarity and  readability. re-cover (as opposed to  recover) de-escalate A compound modifier (also called a compound adjective) is an  adjectival or adverbial phrase of two or more words. According to modern writing  guides, compound modifiers require a hyphen between each word (not between the  phrase and the noun the phrase modifies). Hyphens help prevent confusion;  otherwise, a reader might interpret the words separately, rather than as a  phrase. One or more hyphens join the words into a single idea. [_edit_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Compound_modifier&action=edit&section=1) ]

Examples

• Long-term contract (not long term contract—a long  contract about a term) 
• Hard-fought battle  ∑ Better-educated individuals [_edit_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Compound_modifier&action=edit&section=2) ]

Exceptions:

• Do not use a hyphen following adverbs that end in “ly” (quickly  forgotten incident). 
• Do not use a hyphen following “very” (very elaborate presentation).  

Most phrases that need hyphens as compound modifiers should not by  hyphenated if they come after the noun they describe: a contract for a long  term. [_edit_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Compound_modifier&action=edit&section=3) ]

References
The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual, Addison-Wesley  Publishing Company, Inc. (1992)
Rules and customs of usage
A definitive collection of hyphen rules does not exist, as evidenced by the 
accepted convention that adjectives (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjective)
of color are left  open, without a hyphen. Therefore, the writer or editor
should consult a manual of style
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manual_of_style)  or dictionary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary)   of his or her
preference, particularly for the country in which they are  writing. When dealing with complex words the issue of ease of reading should be  uppermost in the author’s mind.
∑ Except for noun-_noun_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noun)  and
adverb (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverb) -adjective compound modifiers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_modifier) ,  when a compound modifier appears before a term, the compound modifier  is generally hyphenated in order to prevent any possible misunderstanding,  such as twentieth-century invention, cold-hearted person, and  award-winning show. Without the hyphens, there is potential confusion  about whether “twentieth” applies to “century” or “invention”, and similar. 
∑ Hyphens are generally not used in noun-noun or adverb-adjective  compound modifiers when no such confusion is possible; for example: 
∑ government standards organization and department store  manager 
∑ wholly owned subsidiary and quickly moving vehicle  (because the adverbs end in a ly)
∑ Hyphenation is also common with adjective-noun compound modifiers but,  arguably, less generally. For example, real-world example and  left-handed catch. Where the adjective-noun phrase would be plural  standing alone it usually becomes singular and hyphenated when modifying  another noun. For example, four days becomes four-day week. 
∑ Two-word names of numbers less than one hundred are hyphenated. For  instance, the number 23 should be written twenty-three, and  123 should be written one hundred [and] twenty-three. (The  and is normally included in British, Australian and New Zealand English  but often omitted in American English.) 
∑ Hyphens are occasionally used to denote syllabification
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabification) , as in  syl-lab-i-fi-ca-tion. Most American dictionaries use an interpunct (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpunct) , sometimes  called a “middle dot” or “hyphenation point”, for this purpose, as in  syl·lab·i·fi·ca·tion. 
∑ Hyphens are sometimes used in English to denote syllable breaks,  particularly for prefixes, such as when a (repeated) vowel is pronounced on  its own rather than being silent or merged in a diphthong
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diphthong) , as in  ‘co-operate’ and ‘re-enlist’ or even ‘de-ice’ and
‘re-ink’, where some other  languages (and some English authorities) use a diaresis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaresis)  like this: ‘noël’ or  ‘coöperate’. 
∑ Some words are hyphenated in order to distinguish them from other
words  which would otherwise be homographs
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homograph) , such as “_recreation_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recreation) “ (fun
or sport)  and “_re-creation_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-creation) “ (in
forensics), or “predate” (what a predator
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predator)  does) and “pre-date”  (to be of an earlier calendar date
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_date) ). 
∑ If a word begins on one line of text and continues into the following line  a hyphen is usually inserted immediately before the split. Note that the  details of doing this properly are complex, language-dependent and interact with other typesetting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typesetting)  practices: see  justification (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justification_(typesetting))   and hyphenation  algorithm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyphenation_algorithm) . 
∑ Some married couples compose a new surname
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surname)  (sometimes referred to  as a double-barrelled  name
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-barrelled_name) ) for their new family by combining their two surnames with a hyphen.  Jane Doe and John Smith might become Jane and John Smith-Doe, or Doe-Smith,  for instance. In some countries, however, only the woman hyphenates her birth  surname, appending her husband’s surname. 
∑ A hyphen may be used in quotations to imply the spelling of a word such as  “W-O-R-D spells word.” 
∑ Hyphens are used to connect numbers and words, whether numerals or written  out, as in 28-year-old woman (cf. twenty-eight-year-old woman) or 36-year  veteran, in forming adjectival phrases. This is particularly used when forming  adjectival phrases for weights and measures, such as “98-pound weakling” or  “320-foot wingspan.” However, the authorities of the metric system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI)   have declared that it not to be used for the weights and measures of the  metric system. Many other languages do not form such adjectival phrases, but  use phraseology that appears circumlocutory in comparison. As of yet, it has  not been resolved whether this is an affront to the English language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language) ,  which, though lacking a comparable global bureaucracy, might be said to have  some significance in the world today. 
∑ They are also used in spelled-out fractions, such as ‘two-thirds majority’  and ‘one-eighth portion’.
The use of the hyphen has, in general, been steadily declining, both in 
popular writing and in scholarly journals. Its use is almost always avoided by 
those who write for newspapers, for advertising
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising)  copy or for  labels on packaging since they are often more
concerned with visual cleanliness  than semantic clarity; the words are left with spaces. However, it is still used  in most (American) newspapers and magazines, thus people remain accustomed to  seeing and understanding its use. In other countries hyphens are dropped in  favour of connecting the two-word compounds.  Traditionally an en dash (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En_dash)  (‘–‘) replaces the  hyphen in hyphenated compounds if either of its constituent parts is either  already hyphenated or contains a space.
[_edit_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hyphen&action=edit&section=2) ]
Examples of usage
Some strong examples of semantic changes caused by the placement of  hyphens:
∑ disease causing poor nutrition, meaning a disease that causes poor  nutrition 
∑ disease-causing poor nutrition, meaning poor nutrition that causes  disease
∑ a man-eating shark is a carnivorous fish 
∑ a man eating shark is a male human in the active process of  consuming a shark, possibly as part of a shark fin soup
∑ New age-discrimination rules, meaning new rules regarding  discrimination according to age 
∑ New-age discrimination rules, meaning rules regarding  discrimination
(not necessarily according to age) consistent with (or against)  the _New Age_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Age)   movement Additional examples of proper use:
∑ text-only document or …document that is only in text 
∑ Detroit-based organization or …organization that is based in  Detroit
∑ state-of-the-art product or …product is state-of-the-art  (product is an advanced state does not contain hyphens) 
∑ board-certified strategy or …strategy that is certified by the  board
∑ thought-provoking argument or …argument that provokes  thought 
∑ time-sensitive error or …error that is sensitive to time 
∑ case-sensitive password or …password that is sensitive to  casing 
∑ government-issued photo ID or …photo ID that is issued by the  government (…is issued by the government does not contain hyphens) 
∑ light-absorbing material or …material that absorbs light 
∑ award-winning novel or …novel that won an award or multiple  awards
(but, more likely, …won an award with no hyphen) 
∑ web-based encyclopedia or …encyclopedia that is based on the  web 
∑ fun-loving person or …person that loves fun 
∑ how to wire-transfer funds or …how to transfer funds by wire  
∑ how to tax-plan or …how to plan for taxes 
∑ advertising-supported service or service that is supported by  advertising 
∑ Rudolph Giuliani (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolph_Giuliani)  is  an Italian-American (but see hyphenated  American (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyphenated_American) ) 
∑ list of  China-related topics
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_China-related_topics)  …list of topics that are related to China 
∑ out-of-body  experience
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-body_experience)  
∑ near-death  experience
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-death_experience)