"2-hour delay" vs "2 hours' delay" (2024)

Hi all, are the following two forms of writing about the delay both correct?

"Please expect a 2-hour delay."
"Please expect a 2 hours' delay."

Many thanks!

Jean-Michel Carrère said:

In my opinion, either of your sentences is perfectly correct.

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No, as Copyright wrote, the correct form of the second one is "Please expect two hours' delay."

It is possible to find all manner of things on the internet. Many aspects of English usage are convention. One of those conventions is to hyphenate compound adjectives, hence "a two-hour delay". The Saxon genitive may be used to indicate possession, but it would be hard to describe a house, an inanimate object, as possessing a door (the house's door), or a table a leg (the table's leg). The use of the form "two hours' delay" is standard English, and has been so for much longer than I have been speaking and writing the language. There are previous threads on the use of the Saxon genitive when describing time periods such as "two weeks' holiday", "a fortnight's rest", "three years' hard labour" etc.

Edit

PS I should have pointed out the parallel constructions:
The leg of the table / The table's leg / The table leg.
A delay of two hours / Two hours' delay / A two-hour delay.
Genitive / Saxon genitive / noun (or noun phrase) used adjectivally.

EdisonBhola said:

Hi all, are the following two forms of writing about the delay both correct?

"Please expect a 2-hour delay."
"Please expect a 2 hours' delay."

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As others have said, the first one is fine, but you need to remove the article and the hyphen from the second.

Hi EdisonBhola,

"Please expect a 2-hour delay" is correct. In the second sentence the article has to be removed but the apostrophe stays. Correct version:

"Please expect 2 hours' delay", exactly as recommended by Copyright.

For me a "two hour delay" is a single delay lasting two hours. The emphasis is on the delay.

"A two hours delay" has the emphasis on the hours which happen to be part of a delay.

A difference more theoretical than real.

I've noticed that both our French and Italian contributors continue to write the numeral '2'. In standard English, numbers under twenty are usually spelt out in full (sorry, Neal41).

Copyright answered this question in #2.

Keith Bradford said:

I've noticed that both our French and Italian contributors continue to write the numeral '2'. In standard English, numbers under twenty are usually spelt out in full (sorry, Neal41).

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In the case of formal writing, like something that would be sent to a copy editor, I suspect that what you say is true. However, in Google '2 hour delay' is somewhat more common that 'two hour delay' (with or without a hypen) and '2 ounce bottle' is much more frequent that 'two ounce bottle'. And of course the form with singular 'hour' is much more common than the form with 'hours' (about 13:1).