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I need vice presidential help.

Or do I need vice-presidential help?

Sarah Palin’s ascension to the national limelight by being named to the No. 2 spot on the Republican ticket has, as I said in my previous post, caused us no end of serious discussion here in the News-Miner’s newsroom.

But it is a nagging question of vice presidential (or is it “vice-presidential”?) hyphenation that has been, well, nagging at me since Sen. John McCain made The Announcement last month. If only he had told us that day “And I stand for ample use of the hyphen.”

But Sen. McCain didn’t say that.

So here I am, arguing for no hyphen but feeling I may be on the wrong end of the debate with the News-Miner’s chief copy editor, who argues that the hyphen in “vice-presidential debate” is needed because the first two words constitute a compound modifier.

Yes, I understand the bit about compound modifiers, but it just seems odd that the hyphen is needed when the two words, except for the “-ial” being added, have a regular meaning unto themselves. They aren’t cobbled together for this one purpose regarding the upcoming debate between two candidates for high office; they hang around together all the time to mean the person who is second in command in the United States of America.

And a hyphen comes with the general concept that it isn’t necessary if its exclusion doesn’t cause ambiguity. And what can be ambiguous about “vice presidential debate”? Nothing, I say.

I can’t find the answer in my grammar/language books. (If you’re interested, by the way, some of my books are “The Deluxe Transitive Vampire,” by Karen Elizabeth Gordon; “Woe is I,” by Patricia T. O'Connor; Webster’s “Standard American Style Manual,” and, of course, Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style.”

What I need from out there in grammar/punctuation land is a good example of a two-word noun that can be converted to an adjective without the hyphen.

So which is it: hyphen or no? If you’re on my side, let me know where you found the rule. If I’m wrong, well, poke me with a sharpened hyphen, but also tell me where to find that elusive rule.