Question

Read the sentence.

The shop next door, which is family owned, creates specially made, chocolate covered desserts.

Which part of the sentence should be hyphenated?

“next door”
“family owned”
“specially made”
“chocolate covered”

Answer 1

"Chocolate covered" should be hyphenated.

The new sentence would be:

"The shop next door, which is family owned, creates specially made, chocolate-covered desserts."

Answer 2

The answer to your question would be that the part of the sentence that should be hyphenated is the following one: chocolate covered.  The fact is that when you connect two words with a hyphen, you make it clear that the words function as a unit.

In this sentence "chocolate-covered" modifies "desserts".  The compound clearly indicates that the desserts have been covered with chocolate. Therefore, the revision of the sentence would be as follows:

The shop next door, which is family owned, creates specially made, chocolate- covered desserts.