Q:

"Dearly-missed hometown" or "dearly missed hometown?"

The reason of my confusion is that I get both on Google: 

Back in Lakewood, our dearly missed hometown. We used to buy our
  birthday cakes from a fabulous little neighborhood shop called Cakes
  by ...
But if you live in my dearly-missed hometown of Philly,
  well, you probably go about things a little bit differently. Take one
  Fatai King, a man with ...

Which is the right version, and why?

A:

The hyphen is not needed between an adverb and the adjective it modifies. The meaning is perfectly clear without a hyphen.
I wouldn't say it's wrong to put one in, but my advice is to save your hyphens for when you really need them for clarity.

