The More You Grammar - Hyphen Edition

By Ben Goodwin

Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of The More You Grammar. Today’s topic is a heartwarming tale of courage about the little punctuation that could—the hyphen. Often overshadowed by and confused with its bully-of-a-big-brother the dash (like in the last sentence), the hyphen actually has a great many more uses. So before you hyphen-ventilate (see what I did there?), here is a list of the many ways you too (yes you!) can begin to use this amazingly short piece of punctuation properly (mmm… alliteration is tasty!).

Use a hyphen to join CERTAIN compound words (all caps means PAY ATTENTION!):
o Some compound words (I said SOME!) are hyphenated (which I’ve heard is a very painful process). These are words like sister-in-law, will-o’-the-wisp (o’ that crazy wisp), and Scotch-Irish.
o A “good” dictionary (you know, one that obeys its parents) will list which compounds should be hyphenated (see it just sounds painful) and which should not. So don’t go using those “bad” dictionaries—you’ll just be looking for trouble (and that starts with T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Poorly Hyphenated Word).
o A general rule of thumb to go by is if the compound isn’t in the goody-two-shoes dictionary, then write it as two words without a hyphen (tree trunk for example).

Use a hyphen to join multiple words used as a single adjective:
o I’ve done this a couple of times already today (guess where and win a prize), but two or one words used as a single adjective BEFORE a noun can be hyphenated together (I smell an indie band name). Examples would be cat-and-mouse game, late-model car, or a just-got-out-of-bed-but-don’t-I-look-wonderful hairdo (seriously, how do people do that?).
o Never, ever, EVER hyphenate modifiers following a noun as a subjective compliment (ex. “Hailey is well known” never “Hailey is well-known”). The last person to do this wound up dead the next morning in a pool of red ink. Seriously. For real.
o Also, when using a series of hyphenated modifiers (sounds kinky right?), omit the part following the hyphen until the last item. For example, “The drawer contained only ten-, twenty-, and fifty-dollar bills, so the guy wanting quarters for the vending machine was going to be pissed.”

Use a hyphen to join two-word numbers and fractions:
o Although not written out often, two-word numbers such as thirty-three or ninety-eighth are hyphenated, as are fractions such as three-fourths or one-eighth (so drug dealers should pay attention to this rule, hi drug dealers!).
o Other words used in multi-word numbers are not hyphenated, such as “four hundred twenty-five” and “five twenty-fourths.”

Use a hyphen to avoid ambiguity:
o Hyphens don’t just help us join words, they also help us to segregate them (oh no! hyphens are racist!) For example, if you said “I am the third prize winner” (and I would be so proud), you could mean that you won third place or you could mean you were the third person to receive a prize. To solve this confusion, the first meaning should read ‘I am the third-prize winner” (still proud) and the second “I am the third prize-winner.”
o Hyphens are used in a similar way to clear up confusion about awkward combinations of words or letters. You would write semi-independent but semiconscious, and “re-sign the petition” versus “resign the position.”

Use a hyphen with CERTAIN prefixes and suffixes(and remember, if it’s prefixed it’s still broken):
o With ex-, self-, all-, quasi-, and -elect, always use hyphens, like with ex-manager, self-pity, all-country, quasi-science, and Mayor-elect Jimbo (Jimbo 2010 Woo!).
o Also use hyphens between a prefix and a capitalized word, and with letters and figures such as anti-American, T-shirt, pre-Civil war, and mid-1980’s (Bonus Points: use all the previous terms in one sentence!).

Use a hyphen in dialogue to show hesitation, stammering, or spelled-out words:
o The hyphen lives a whole different life in the realm of creative writing, where it can be an important indicator in dialogue. A mother might say to her son “It’s time to clean your r-o-o-m” if she really wanted to piss him off (I’m sorry, I had a Jewish mother, there is trauma), or you might say “It’s c-c-cold in h-h-here” after the second hour locked in the walk-in freezer (again trauma).

Use a hyphen to divide long words between lines:
o Most word processing programs out on the market today use an instant wrap-around function to automatically place long words on the next line, but back in the dark and distinctly sexist times of the typewriter, these words had to be manually separated between lines (I’d say I’m dating myself but my imaginary girlfriend would be jealous). So if you’ve fallen into a time rift, are stuck using a Neanderthal of a computer, or (god forbid!) are writing by hand, here are the rules for separating words with hyphens.
o A good rule of thumb is to divide words between lines using natural breaks between syllables, like sell-ing, pref-er-ence (which could be divided at either break), or in-di-vid-u-al-ist (which gives you way too many options).
o However, for words ending in -ing that have double consonants, hyphenate at the root word as with plan-ning and run-ning. Also, never put two-letter suffixes at the beginning of a new line (you would never separate actually as actual-ly), and never separate the first or last letter in a word (even though e-val-u-ate falls into syllables as such, you would never separate it as e-valuate).

Well there you have it, everything you need to know that I know about hyphens. If you have a hyphen-related question (it’s so fun to use hyphens with the word hyphen–try it!), or any other hyphen information I have missed, please feel free to send it my way. Until next time, seriously… LEARN HOW TO GRAMMAR!

Sources:
English Simplified, Eleventh Edition
Purdue OWL - Hyphens