Hyphen (-)

When two or more words represent a single idea they can be combined with a hyphen. Sometimes.

Introduction

The hyphen is used in the construction of compound words and to split words across two lines.

Hyphens and Dashes

The hyphen is one of three horizontal bars used as punctuation marks. A fourth bar, the underscore (_) is not used in written English.

The relative size of each of the three horizontal bars is shown below.

Compound Nouns

Here is some trivia: the word today was not always spelt this way.

Originally it was two words (to day), but people got lazy and bolted them together with a hyphen (to-day). Eventually, people got so lazy they dropped the hyphen altogether and we are left with our current spelling (today).

Will this trend continue? Will people start writing 2day to save a letter?

Hopefully not, but the trend towards squishing words together is common in English.

All of this is a roundabout way of explaining that some words are connected by hyphens, and are thus a kind of compound noun.

There are three kinds of compound nouns: open compounds, hyphenated compounds and closed compounds:

Here, we are interested in hyphenated compounds.

However, it can be tricky to know whether a word should be hyphenated because, as mentioned, language changes over time. A term that was once two words may now be hyphenated, or even a single word, depending how lazy people are.

So, how do we know whether to include a hyphen or not?

For compound nouns a dictionary or spell checker is the only way to be sure. That said, even these can be behind the times when it comes to everyday usage. Still, they are the only reference we have when it comes to correct usage.

Compound Adjectives

Unlike compound nouns and verbs, compound adjectives cannot be found in the dictionary. There is, however, a rule that determines whether or not a hyphen is required.

Essentially, this rule states that when two or more words appear directly before the noun that they describe, they should be hyphenated.

Without this hyphenation, the meaning of a sentence can change.

There is effectively no limit to the number of hyphenated words that can be linked together to describe the proceeding noun. In addition, compound adjectives can be separated by commas in a list.

However, if an adverb that ends with -ly is part of a compound adjective no hyphen should follow this word (it is clear to the reader that this word is related to the one that follows).

In addition, if compound adjectives appear after the noun they describe, they should not be hyphenated.

Splitting Words Across Lines

If there is insufficient space to finish a word within the current line, a hyphen can be used to split this word.

When writing on a computer this is rarely necessary because modern word processors automatically move a word to the next line when needed. For professional printers, hyphenation may still be required, but this decision is made by an editor rather than a writer.

When handwriting a document we may still need to use a hyphen to split a word across lines. When doing so, we should consider how this split will affect the reading of the sentence.

In general, it is preferable to split a word roughly in two, and to place the hyphen between syllables,

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