In the Writing Center with Ronnie B: A Quick Look at Hyphens

Explains how to use hyphens to create compound words and compound adjectives and clarify single words.

Hyphens are used to create compound words — words joined and separated by hyphens in order to make meaning clear. Compound words can be nouns, verbs, adjectives, or newly-created words.

Hyphens are most often used to create hyphenated or compound adjectives. Like the incorrect use of the comma (comma faults and comma splices), the hyphen is often omitted or misused. Knowing how to create hyphenated adjectives is important in order to avoid confusion and make meaning clear.

Incorrect:

• A cadre of corrupt CEOs have crippled this once, proud company.

What is a “once, proud” company? This does not make sense, so omit the comma. But we still have a problem. “Proud” describes company (a proud company), but “once” does not (a once company?).

Helpful Hint: When each adjective does not describe the subject on its own, use a hyphen (or hyphens) to create a single or hyphenated adjective:

Correct:

• A once-proud company.

Now this makes sense. We have a company that was proud once upon a time but is not proud any longer. Note how much confusion a misplaced comma can cause. But also note how much clarity a correctly placed hyphen can provide.

• She completed the one page assignment.

Test the adjectives using the hint from above: A “one” assignment? A “page” assignment? Because neither adjective describes the subject on its own, you must use a hyphen to create a single adjective:

• She completed the one-page assignment.

Sometimes the hyphen can play tricks on the unaware. When two Chattanooga newspapers merged — the News and the Free Press — someone hyphenated the merger and the paper became the Chattanooga News-Free Press (which sounds like the paper is news free or without news). Like the misplaced comma, the misused hyphen can create confusion and unintended meaning.

Sometimes a hyphen is added to a single word to make its meaning clear:

• I’ll re-cover the sofa when I recover from the flu.

If in doubt about creating hyphenated words, check a dictionary; hyphenated words, when used frequently, often become single words:

• on-line vs. online
• e-mail vs. email

Hyphens are also used to join two or more words in order to make a new word or words (compound words) for the sake of clarity:

• His seat-of-the-pants way of working annoys me.
• The artist’s on-the-spot revisions were impressive.
• An off-the-shelf Linux-based computer met our needs adequately.

What kind of way? A “seat-of-the-pants” way. What type of revisions? “On-the-spot” revisions. What kind of computer? Not just any computer, but a “Linux-based” computer that was purchased “off-the-shelf.”

In the first two examples, “seat-of-the-pants” and “on-the-spot” are hyphenated or compound adjectives, whereas in the third example only “off-the-shelf” is an adjective: “off-the-shelf” describes the “Linux-based computer.”

Many nouns are two words (compound nouns) until they are used as adjectives:

• We need eggs, milk, and ice cream.

• We need eggs, milk, and ice-cream cones.

But some words remain hyphenated no matter how they are used:

• Betty’s old job was part-time; her new one is full-time with benefits.

Hyphenated words used in a list keep their hyphens but “share” words common to all:

• Betty is interested in any full-, part-, or half-time jobs you send her way.

Use hyphens if the first word of a compound word ends with the same letter that begins the second word:

• doll-like
• non-native

Exceptions to the rule:

The words “cooperate,” “cooperation,” and “cooperative,” for example, can be written with or without a hyphen:

• co-operation

Use hyphens when you write out numbers between 21 and 99:

• twenty-one; ninety-nine
• one hundred twenty-three
• one thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine

Hyphens are often used as bullets because they are:

• quick
• easy
• effective