Hyphen rules: should it be "tracking number" or "tracking-number"? [closed]

In the following sentence:

Once you have a tracking number for the shipment.

Should it be tracking number or tracking-number?

I read through the Wikipedia article, but it didn't give a clear answer to the above.

Solution 1:

There is no "rule" about hyphenating compound nouns. Certainly in British English, tooth-paste, machine-gun, hair-cut, to-day, good-bye and full-stop are being edged aside by toothpaste, machine gun, haircut, today, goodbye, and full stop. Hyphenated forms tend to be viewed as old fashioned (or 'old-fashioned'). There is no consistency and dictionaries and style guides often contradict each other. Your Wikipedia page makes this lack of consistency clear:

When an object is compounded with a verbal noun, such as egg-beater (a tool that beats eggs), the result is sometimes hyphenated. Some authors do this consistently, others only for disambiguation.

and...

Connecting hyphens are used in a large number of miscellaneous compounds, other than modifiers, such as in lily-of-the-valley, cock-a-hoop, clever-clever, tittle-tattle and orang-utan. Use is often dictated by convention rather than fixed rules, and hyphenation styles may vary between authors; for example, orang-utan is also written as orangutan or orang utan, and lily-of-the-valley may be hyphenated or not.

You should choose a style and stick to it. Consult a dictionary if you are unsure. If the dictionary is unclear, consider a manual of style.

Hyphenating compound words