Does this require hyphenation?

Question

"...avoiding eye contact with any of the already seated students."

Should "already seated" be hyphenated? (Making it "...avoiding eye contact with any of the already-seated students.")

Answer 1

Wiki says no (see source):

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Hyphens should not normally be used in adverb–adjective modifiers such as /wholly owned subsidiary/ and /quickly moving vehicle/ (because the adverbs clearly modify the adjectives; "quickly" does not apply to "vehicle" as "quickly vehicle" would be meaningless).

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Answer 2

Yeah, I think it'd probably be suitable. There's always a degree of subjectivity with respect to hyphenation and no one will take issue with you one way or the other, but in my opinion, I'd recommend hyphenation. It's a grey area, so it's a matter of my preferance rather than dogma, per se... I'm a bit intoxicated now, so I apologise in advance for any spelling and/or syntactical errors as I'm not seeing clearly as of this point, my apoligies.

Answer 3

I do not believe so and I personally would not hyphenate it. One also has to consider the language level that one is using... "Proper English vs common English". The way one would speak and write in everyday English (as with one's friends and in informal letters) would be very different to the more Formal Written English. Also, the English language differs greatly between English speaking countries and even within those countries. for instance, Americans in the north talk different to those in the south with their 'drawl'. Aussies talk a lot different to Kiwi's and Poms. So in the end, it would depend upon your own personal feeling and whether you were writing in Formal English or common everyday English. Go with how you feel.

Answer 4

The test for hyphenation is as follows:

Is the structure ambiguous without it?

In your case, no hyphen is needed.