Talk:Hyphen/Archive 1

Archive 1

Discussion from 2003-2006

Nouns formed of a noun and an adjective are frequently hyphenated, as death-wish - which of those is the adjective? They both look like nouns to me. -- Zoe

I agree. Maybe if I get my thoughts on this collected, I'll work on it. Michael Hardy 00:58 Apr 27, 2003 (UTC)

---

This is a very well-written article. It contains an excellent exposition of the vagaries of hyphenation. However, I'd like to suggest some reworking of this article to reduce what appears to be some degree of bias. It seems to me that the content of this article falls into two categories: (1) an excellent description of the grammatically correct ('proper') usage of hyphens, with a variety of helpful examples, and (2) opinion on 'improper' (that is, grammatically incorrect) hyphenation in present-day writing.

As English is a living, evolving language, a discussion of the historical and current usage of hyphens is an interesting and relevant addition to the article, however the content from the current version of the article that might fall into this category seems to be biased towards so-called 'proper' hyphenation. I can't pretend to be an expert in such things, but this seems to be at odds with the present-day usage of hyphens, which appears to tend more to convention than to hard-and-fast rules. For example, "chocolate ice cream" is typically written without the hyphen, perhaps because it is assumed that everybody knows we are talking about a frozen, dairy-based dessert with a chocolate flavour, rather than cream containing some form of chocolate ice? This assumption does not seem to be entirely unreasonable.

"Chocolate ice cream" is an open compound noun (ice cream) and an adjective (chocolate). If it were cream made of chocolate ice, like you said, it would most certainly be hyphenated, but since it is "ice cream" of the chocolate variety, no hyphen is necessary. Some of the same issues come to play here that are often seen in the difference between commas use with cumulative and cooridiante adjectives; we can be fairly sure that "ice" is not properly an adjective because one would not say "ice chocoalte cream."

It does seem like a good idea to make a distinction between descriptive and prescriptive rules for hyphens--Smallwhitelight 21:22, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps the simplest approach is to begin by dividing the current version of the article into two sections: (1) a description of grammatically correct hyphenation, and (2) a description of the current usage of hyphens, and more generally, the history of the humble hyphen. Might that make it clearer where, exactly, the article may need to have its neutrality improved?

--Ben Cairns 04:35 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

---

The current example of an adjective-adjective compound adjective (heh heh) is no good: truly remarkable progress. But truly is an adverb. I have removed the example but don't have a replacement in mind.

What about something like two colors; e.g., the blue-green sea? Derobert 19:49, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Discussion from 2006

There is an important question missing. When a hyphen is used as a subsitute for the word "to", how ill it be used? I assume that as the hyphen represents the word "to" the sentence "10 to 12" would equal "10 - 12" with spaces in between.

A hyphen should never be used that way. Use an en dash, with no spaces. Dicklyon 16:59, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

---

Newspaper Style Hyphenation I was just wondering. A friend of mine told me that in Spanish, 'newspaper style' hyphenation can only occur between sylables. Does a similar rule apply in English? fetmar

---

I have altered the hyphenation section which deals with the SI authorities and their desire to limit hyphenation regarding the metric system in the English language. Since they aren't English language authorities, they are irrelevent. Slamlander (2006)

Hey, Slamlander, irrelevant is awfully strong. So strong as to be incorrect. In any event, I've added a bit more info to that passage and included two references, one each from BIPM, the international body, and from NIST, the authority within the US.—PaulTanenbaum (talk) 17:32, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

---

In my experience, hyphenated words in English are often an intermediate step in the evolution of a compound word, eg "web site" to "web-site" to "website", so the correct form really depends on how far along the word is. That's why hyphenated words can make a text look old-timey. 207.229.185.50 09:21, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the "and" in multidigit numbers, I've always understood that it should only be used to mean a decimal point, as in "one hundred twenty-three and four tenths" for "123.4", but I don't know if that's British or American usage, or even if it's still applicable. 207.229.185.50 09:25, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Double hyphen

An edition of Merriam-Webster's Dictionary that was published in the early 80s (I think) contained a punctuation guide which described the "double hyphen," something I've never seen described or even mentioned anywhere else. The glyph looked like a shortened equals sign, slightly tilted so it ran southwest-northeast. It was to be used when a hyphenated word needed to be broken at the end of the line at the hyphen (like "present-day," with "day" starting a new line).

Has anyone else ever heard of such a beast? Would it be worthy of adding to this article? --TobyRush 15:47, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

I've never heard of it, but something like that would be useful when a URL is presented in printed text, especially in a newspaper or magazine with narrow columns. Some URLs contain hyphens, so the necessity of breaking a URL between two lines creates ambiguity if a hyphen is inserted. JamesMLane 07:34, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

I have written a short article about it at double hyphen. -- Naive cynic 17:23, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Thank you, Naive cynic... very nice article. It's comforting when something you thought only you cared about is expounded upon by someone else! --TobyRush 16:06, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

I had a dictionary that used it as a kid, which would be more like the 60s than the 80s. I think it was for ALL instances of the hyphen, not just those from word wrap coincidences. I thought the dictionary was an M/W, but that doesn't jibe with the relevent options offered in the double hyphen article. Was F/W even AROUND in the 60s?

It also used the diaresis (umlaut) on double Os (cooperation, etc), fwiw. Not sure about other diphthongs.

The section at double hyphen is fine and dandy, btw, but it really needs to be included in THIS article as well. Especially in the case of M/W where the symbol had an actual PURPOSE beyond just being a variant. 66.105.218.18 (talk) 08:35, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Potential confusion example

This is the example I like to use in class:

• A Canadian football player might play in the NFL (or play soccer).
• A Canadian-football player might be from America.

Mwalcoff 21:36, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

hyphenating "non-," "un-," etc.

I'd like to see a discussion of whether "non-" and such should be hyphenated. The article happens to use a hyphenated "non-", when it refers to the "non-breaking hyphen." I know some people who say you shouldn't hyphenate these things because prefixes like "non-" and "un-" aren't words themselves. Does it make sense to hyphenate "non-breaking," but not "nonsense?" Why? As a reader, I would be annoyed and distracted by both "nonbreaking" and "non-sense," but I don't know if that's a clear and universal distinction.--Bcrowell 00:09, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

--72.57.52.146 19:07, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

"Choose from one- to three-night stays"

I can't seem to locate a relevant example on the wiki page; is this the proper use of a two 'preceding' words followed by hyphens with the second word being followed by the 'modifying' word?

Johngunter 19:19, 25 May 2006 (UTC) John

I think so. Michael Hardy 23:47, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Hyphenation with extra words

Is it correct to hyphenate as follows (when referring to candy that tastes like ice cream): "ice cream-flavored candy"? Thanks in advance.--GregRM 23:54, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Strictly speaking (in British English at least), it should be ice-cream-flavored candy - can't speak for US English. Dave.Dunford 02:07, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks.--GregRM 02:15, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

section on word splits

does anyone think a general overview of word splits should be given under 'examples of usage'? it seems appropriate to me, given that it is one of the uses of hyphens... 202.156.6.54 12:45, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

POV-section

I've tagged the rules for usage section as POV, because it states that certain forms of usage simply are correct, without citation of sources or grammatical references. What we need to do is cite a style guide as a source, otherwise we're just pulling these things out of our ass. Also, a statement like "When dealing with complex words the issue of ease of reading should be uppermost in the author's mind." is irredemably POV and needs to be excised. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 07:33, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Is there some other POV that this one contrasts with? Or is your objection purely theoretical? Dicklyon 16:25, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Saying "murder is bad" may not get much opposition, but it's still POV. The current phrasing violates NPOV and OR policy. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:16, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how "When dealing with complex words the issue of ease of reading should be uppermost in the author's mind" is POV. You will find this kind of common-sense statement in the introduction to many style guides and language reference books. However, "in the author's mind" seems fussy and unnecessary, so I have removed it.--Shantavira 12:52, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I changed it further, to not be prescriptive of what a writer should do, but descriptive of the intent and what editors will allow. And I took out the POV tag. See if you think it's OK this way. Dicklyon 15:25, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

By the way, it's OK for the author of a style manual to have a POV and express it. If you want that here, it would be best to quote and cite one of those, since prescriptive and POV statements are not encyclopedic. Dicklyon 15:26, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Is this on purpose?

The following is a quote from the main page:

• state-of-the-art product or …product is state-of-the-art (product is an advanced state does not contain hyphens)

Is there a reason this is contradicted at the end of the sentence? --Thaddius 16:26, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

That's a confusing section. A state-of-the-art product is a product that has advances representing the current state of the art. Saying a product is state-of-the-art is just moving the adjective phrase to the end. This sort of example is not parallel with some of the others. It's a mess. Dicklyon 23:28, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Hyphenating lengths/heights

I have searched style manuals and have, on occasion, found reference to hyphenating lengths and heights. Oddly, I cannot find a reference for it at this time, but I do recall that at least one was a specialized style manual, such as a MT manual (specifically for medical transcription). What is the general convention, particularly for common English prose? I am referring to a sentence such as: "He was a man of about six-foot two inches..." or "Just five-foot-two, he was of small frame and stature...." or "A six-foot-six-inch athlete,...."

Detroit-based and web-based

These are used as examples of proper usage, but I believe these violate the guideline that says "Hyphens are generally not used in noun-noun or adverb-adjective compound modifiers when no such confusion is possible" Comments?

I don't think based is a noun here, but confusion is possible, e.g. between "Foobar is a web based on its connectivity" versus "Foobar is a web based application". The latter should have a hyphen to prevent the possibility of garden-path interpretation as the first. Dicklyon 23:22, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Is there a Rule for "one woman" vs. "two-women"?

If so, can someone direct me to it - within WP of course! If not, can someone write an WP Article for it? Yours, etc. Ludvikus 19:37, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Don't say "two-women". If used as an adjective, use a hyphen, as in "two-woman show"; otherwise don't. Dicklyon 19:47, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Examples

I don't think twentieth-century invention, cold-hearted person, and award-winning show are particularly good examples, as there's little chance of genuine confusion (what's a "century invention"?) But I struggled to think of better ones - American-football player maybe (as suggested by Mwalcoff above). Dave.Dunford 02:15, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

De-, pre-, etc.

Notable exceptions to this are where the prefix is "de", "pro", "pre", or "re", as in "deemphasis" and "preemptive". (See also the use of the prefix "co" below.)

I'd argue with this. British usage would (probably) still hyphenate here. Deemphasis would generally be hyphenated (de-emphasis) in British English. Dave.Dunford

Diacritic?

Why is this included among the "symbols sometimes used as a diacritic"? Can anyone given an example of a hyphen that's used as a diacritic? FilipeS 16:39, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Examples

The remarks in parentheses following a couple of the examples didn't make any sense to me so I looked at the edit history. An anonymous user changed all the examples from, e.g.

"text-only document" or "...document is text-only"

to

"text-only document" or "...document that is only in text"

making some of the parenthetical remarks make no sense, and also defeating the original purpose... the different phrasings were meant to show that an adjective that has a hyphen when used before a noun also has a hyphen when used in a "to be" sentence. I don't think people need an explanation of what "text-only document" means, which is all the current version provides (clumsily, even).

Ah, I just noticed that there are comments about this above. The old version was

"state-of-the-art product" or "...product is state-of-the-art" (but "The state of the art is very advanced." with no hyphen)

and it was changed to

"state-of-the-art product" or "...product is state-of-the-art" ("product is an advanced state" does not contain hyphens)

the original parenthetical remark noting that the noun phrase "state of the art" doesn't need hyphenating.

The thing is, these edits were made back in June 2006, and have been left this way since then. So I just wanted to see what people think before I revert this section back to the old one. --Galaxiaad 06:55, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I see no harm either way. The annon used the same principal as was started within the section: "disease-causing poor nutrition, meaning poor nutrition that causes disease". You will notice that the definition does not contain a hyphenated word. This is by design. The additional examples use "or" instead of "meaning" but should work the same way, however I do not see the meaning of hyphenated words as something very difficult to figure out. A possessive noun ("John's chair") only needs to be described once as "the chair belonging to John" instead of every time as possessive noun appears. I may remove the definitions of the additionals and see how that works. — CobraWiki ^{( jabber | stuff )} 16:29, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

The examples in the original version, which I changed it back to, are meant to show that the adjectives ("text-only", etc.) are hyphenated whether they come directly before a noun or after a noun + copula (form of "to be"). So it does serve a more useful purpose than the silly explanations of what each means. --Galaxiaad 03:48, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

But note, FWIW, that I've added an example showing that for many more common expressions the question whether to hyphenate or not does depend on location (before the noun being modified vs. in the predicate).—PaulTanenbaum 16:06, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Confusing or conflicting statements

The sentences "Its use is almost always avoided by those who write for newspapers...However, it is still used in most (American) newspapers and magazines," seem to be saying two completely opposite things. Can someone please clarify? Benstrider 03:25, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

1st order

how about it, how to write it? which version is correct?

• 1st-order
• 1st order
• 1^st order
• 1^st-order

I mean in the scientific text, not in Wikipedia. --84.234.42.68 18:56, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Depends on the context, i.e. whether "1st order" is a noun phrase or and adjective phrase. Example: He was a member of the 1st order of a brotherhood of 1st-order logicians. Markus Kuhn 09:12, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

I mean sth like this "the model is described by 1st order transfer function", and is there any diference between American and British English in this case? --84.234.42.68 14:48, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Your example should be rendered as "the model is described by 1st-order transfer function." This avoids possible ambiguity—did the author mean that there are several things called order transfer functions and that the first of these describes the model?—PaulTanenbaum 16:01, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

thanks for your advice, but those who will read that should now anyway, the next question i have is why the part "st" is sometimes indexed, which variant is more common or whats the difference between the 1^st and 1st? --84.234.42.68 12:21, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Dash...

"A hyphen ( -, or dash ) is a punctuation mark. It is used both to join words and to separate syllables. It is often confused with a dash ( –, —, ― ), which is longer and has a different function. "
Am I the only one confused by that? Why does it refer to a hyphen as a dash, and then say it's often confused with a dash? --Daniel15 (^Talk/_Contribs) 07:34, 2 July 2007 (UTC) Isn't a hyphen just a type of dash? Like Ale is a type of beer? Surly they are the same thing the only difference is their use in context as punctuation or as information... Perhaps their typography is different too? --Hm2k (talk) 21:23, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, people also call it the dash, which is why it's in parenthesis. But the difference is in the coding used for each symbol. They're all different from one another because of the code, but they might look very similar. I can't tell either, to be honest. - M0rphzone (talk) 02:44, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Compass points

Can someone please explain the correct use of the hyphen in compass points? When searching for an article on the North-West Highlands of Scotland, I was redirected to Northwest Highlands. However, on searching AskOxford.com for an authoritative answer, I could only get definition results for north-west (in both UK and US views). I can't see any reference to this in Wiki's MoS, so is it a US/UK thing or is it just a simple alternative spelling, with both hyphenated and non-hyphenated forms being acceptable? Chris 42 18:54, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Adverbs

The article doesn't seem to cover this, so I thought I'd ask here:

In the case of adverb-adjective combinations, I've read that it's appropriate to hyphenate only if the adverb doesn't end in '-ly'. So one would say "a well-dressed woman" but not "a neatly-dressed woman". It seems to me that the first looks odd without the hyphen . . . but I'm not sure. Are there special rules based on the ending of the adverb?

Please see User:David_Kernow/Internet_sources_re_hyphens_and_adverbs. -- Wavelength 06:21, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

The article does cover it, under "Customs of usage". The issue isn't whether the modifier ends in -ly but whether the hyphen is necessary to avert confusion. These usually turn out to be the same, however. In an example used in the article, wholly owned subsidiary, there's no need for a hyphen because "wholly" is never anything but an adverb and couldn't modify "subsidiary". In your example, "well" is sometimes an adverb and sometimes an adjective, so the hyphen is appropriate. Thus, a well-dressed woman is a woman who's dressed well; a well dressed woman is a woman who's neither unhealthy nor naked. This analysis seems to be consistent with the sources collected by Wavelength. JamesMLane t c 22:24, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Emails

(Or, indeed, e-mails!) A large number, perhaps even the majority, of my friends use the hyphen in emails as a sort of general-purpose punctuation marker. (For example: "I'll be home tomorrow - it's exciting!") I'm surprised this usage isn't mentioned here. Whether it's "correct" or not is irrelevant: it's common, and should therefore be mentioned. 86.132.140.178 (talk) 04:51, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

• That's not a hyphen, it's a dash (or should be anyway). The article does already say that dashes and hyphens shouldn't be confused, and I also added a note to the computing section to mention that hyphens are often used when properly dashes are required.

Just because it's used in an email shouldn't make a difference. The usage of a dash is the same no matter if it's written electronically or manually.AleXd (talk) 00:58, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Role: to prevent confusion

These rules and exceptions are generally subject to a writer's judgment and may be applied differently to avoid confusion. The Times Online Style Guide suggests using the hyphen "when the phrase would otherwise be ambiguous."

Also, the purpose of grammar is to make communication clearer. If an alleged rule of grammar doesn't make communication clearer -- whether it be this always-use-the-hyphen rule or don't split infinitives -- it's not a rule worth following. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Twipley (talk • contribs) 16:05, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Hear hear! Westmorlandia (talk) 17:54, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Non-breaking hyphen looks identical to regular hyphen - Dubious

From the article:

For this purpose, Unicode also encodes a non-breaking hyphen as U+2011 ( ‑ ). This character looks identical to the regular hyphen, but is not treated as a word boundary.

I have a bog-standard Windows/IE setup, and to me the non-breaking hyphen ( ‑ ) is significantly longer than the hyphen ( - ). Is it the same for others? How should we word this? It ought to look identical?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.152.242.200 (talk) 02:50, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

They're the same length here, Firefox 3 on Windows, and I'm pretty sure that's the way it's meant to be. 219.90.236.109 (talk) 12:45, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

It looks the same length to me, too. → C Teng ^[talk] 15:08, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

My results with Windows XP:

• MS Word: they look identical
• IE7: non-breaking hyphen is longer and there is more leading white space.
• Firefox 3.6: Without zooming, non-breaking hyphen is longer, but the difference is not as pronounced as in IE7. When zooming in, at some settings the non-breaking hyphen is shorter, with more leading white space.
• Chrome 3.0.195.27: Without zooming, length looks similar but non-breaking hyphen has more leading white space. With some zoom settings, the non-breaking hyphen is smaller.

The article needs clarifying. Nurg (talk) 03:23, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I didn't check in a browser, but in a text-editing application, the hyphens and non-breaking hyphens were the same length in Times and Verdana, but in Lucida Grande the non-breaking hyphens were shorter. Modal Jig (talk) 12:55, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Dubious 2

fh From the article:

Instead, time-sensitive documents / the documents are time-sensitive and left-handed catch / he took the catch left-handed, as the compoundscd are adjectives.

Isn't "left-handed" an adverb here, not an adjective? It describes the manner in which he took the catch, doesn't it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.152.242.200 (talk) 03:13, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

But that would be "left-handedly" wouldn't it, if an adverb was intended?

80.88.204.40 (talk) 10:43, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

• You may have a point, but "left-handedly" is not a common word IME, and I can imagine authors being uncertain about using it and plumping for the more familiar "left-handed" instead. Also, I can't think of any other constructions of this "I verbed the noun X" type where X is an adjective and not an adverb. (Well, there are some special cases and idiomatic cases maybe, but they don't seem directly comparable...) 86.134.13.126 (talk) 02:21, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

• No, left-handed is not an adverb, it is an adjctive that modifies the noun catch. A "catch" has two components - a object that is caught, and the action of catching. A left-handed catch is a particular type of catch (namely, a catch in which the action of catching is performed by somebody's left hand). I think your confusion stems from the fact that the component of the catch that "left-handed" describes is an action, so it seems kind of verb-like. A further example: in the phrase "poorly-delivered speech", "poorly-delivered" is an adjective describing an attribute of the "speech" (namely, its delivery, which is an action, but still not a verb). Seeve (talk) 04:41, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I think that may be overanalysing, Seeve - I can equally say "I write left-handed". In that sentence, it probably makes most sense to class "left-handed" as an adverb. I don't see anything particularly terrible about this - English has plenty of irregular words, and exceptions to grammatical rules. Also, if "left-handed" is an adjective modifying "catch", it would be the same to say "I took the left-handed catch" - but I don't think it is the same at all. Westmorlandia (talk) 17:52, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Text Regarding Noun-Noun Modifier is Not Robust

The text dealing with noun-noun modifiers (like the three words before this parenthetical statement) is not robust or consistent.

Robustness:

The rationale given for not hyphenating noun-noun modifiers is not robust and the examples give in support of the position are weak. Noun-noun modifiers should be used to all times. Not doing so because "the intent cannot be misinterpreted" makes big assumptions regarding context and both in the document and in the society of the reader. A given combination of words that obviously must mean one thing at one point in time can easily mean something completely different at another point in time due to things like technological or societal advances. Relying on context to force the reader to understand a set of words in one particular sense is also not reliable since one cannot ASSUME that all readers will have the same life/social/technical context as the author.

Poor Examples:

The weakness of the rationale is evident in the poor examples given:

government standards organization = a government organization that deals with all sort of standards

whereas

government-standards organization = a organization that deals with government standards (as opposed to all standards)

Also consider:

department store manager = a manager of a store within a department (e.g., corporate or government deparment)

department-store manager = a manager of a department store

Given that hyphenating or not hyphenating noun-noun modifiers almost always results in a different meaning and the penalty for using a hyphen in a noun-noun modifier is so minor (i.e., bruising the sensibilities of readers who feel all documents should be written to conform to their context and assumptions), I believe that hyphens should always be used (or not used) as needed to correctly and unambiguously convey meaning or intent.

I welcome discussion on this topic before a change is made in the document.

Thanks!

-Jack

Jack (talk) 08:31, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not the place to advocate for or against a certain style. We should only be concerned here with how it is used.

BTW, "department store manager" is a bad example, because "department store" is a fixed idiomatic compound and would almost always be understood as a unit. The manager of a store within a department would probably use a possessive: "the department's store manager". — Gwalla | Talk 16:08, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't personally see any need to hyphenate "department store manager", but actually Google Book Search does throw up a few instances of the hyphenated form (though none very recent that I could see). I guess it wouldn't hurt to try to think of examples that everyone agrees would never need hyphenating. Matt 02:51, 2 July 2008 (UTC). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.152.243.46 (talk)

Suspended Hyphens

I'm not a native English speaker and so I'm a bit confused by what seems like contradicting statements regarding suspended hyphens in this article and elsewhere. The article states that – as opposed to German – only words that are hyphenated anyway can suspend their second part, using the notation described. Yet at [1] I find the proposition "Use this construction even when the complete words, standing alone, would be closed up" with the example "macro- and microeconomics". So what about this spelling; is it right or wrong? And what about phrases such as "nation- or even worldwide" or "help- and insightful"? Unnecessary to mention that I can't edit the article myself as I have no idea about the rules that apply here. --Mudd1 (talk) 16:52, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I can only say what looks right and what looks wrong: "macro- and microeconomics" looks OK, I think because each is understood as a type of "economics". Saying "nation- or even worldwide" looks stranger, because "wide" has a slightly different connotation when separated, and this structure highlights that discrepancy. "Help- and insightful" is definitely incorrect - "ful" cannot stand alone as a word or concept.

This is not a technical analysis, just my view of standard usage. But then I believe standard usage governs right and wrong in any case... ;-) Westmorlandia (talk) 17:44, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

In my opinion, suspended hyphens should be avoided at all costs, for readability. I don't know when they started coming into use, but I do not like them at all. It seems something the under 30's in our office have been taught to use. But the whole world is not "under 30" so they should be avoided. I am going to start a crusade against suspended hyphens and also against the single-space sentence separator. It is ridiculous. In business, we write for our customers and thus must make ease of reading the #1 priority. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.26.82.114 (talk) 18:15, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

In numbers, symbols

Should hyphens used to join numbers, symbols and words? In science this is frequent e. g.: 2-norm, k-means, rank-16, rank-r, 3-dimensional, $\ell_1$-norm. Sustik (talk) 05:55, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

I think so. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:54, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

It might be nice to include an explanation of this usage in MOS:HYPHEN. I don't think it's currently there. (See also the comment at Talk:H-index#Why_the_hyphen.3F.) —195.94.37.227 (talk) 08:16, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Since it's context dependent, it would not be right to say yes or no. Mostly yes for the examples you give, at least when they are used as adjectives (k-means algorithm, rank-16 matrix, 3-dimensional model). The hyphens in compound nouns are less common, but depend on particular usage conventions. I'd have to look up the norms in sources and see. And there are rules about units, such that a one-meter length is hyphenated but a 1 m height is not (never hyphenate with a unit abbreviation, but OK to hyphenate 3-d where d abbreviated dimensional). Dicklyon (talk) 19:26, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

For L1 norm, most sources don't hyphenate unless it is used as an adjective, it looks like. But yes on h-index and 2-norm. I dehyphenated some articles like L pad, Pi pad, T pad, which show up mixed in sources, but for which it seems that the hyphen is superfluous and non-clarifying. Dicklyon (talk) 19:32, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Traditional hyphenation vindicated!!

Right at the top left of Wikipedia's main page, today's featured article began thus:

Operation Epsom was a Second World War British offensive that took place between 26–30 June 1944, during the Battle of Normandy. The offensive was intended to outflank and seize the German occupied city of Caen, which was

Caen was not a German city that was occupied. Caen was a city that was occupied by Germans. So I changed it:

Operation Epsom was a Second World War British offensive that took place between 26–30 June 1944, during the Battle of Normandy. The offensive was intended to outflank and seize the German-occupied city of Caen, which was

You couldn't ask for a better example or occasion to defend traditional hyphenation. The use of hyphens in this way has only very slowly been dying out for a long time. It's not used in advertising or packaging, but it's still (usually) followed by magazines, newspapers, and book publishers, so people are accustomed to understanding it, even though many educated people are not to using it. This is a really clear-cut case of its utility, in a conspicuous place. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:54, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I actually think this is a good example of a circumstance where a hyphen is clearly required even though there is no real ambiguity (and therefore no real utility). Although it is technically possible that "German" could modify "city," this would sound unnatural (if this were the intent, a native speaker would use the phrase "occupied German city"). However, even though the phrase is not really ambiguous, Michael Hardy correctly points out that a hyphen is required because its omission looks wrong. Seeve (talk) 01:55, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

"Looks wrong?"  "No utility"?  I think this misses the point, that good typography saves the reader time.  Ix'm sxuxrxe txhxaxt pxexoxpxlxe cxaxn rxexaxd txhxixs, txoxo, but does it just "look wrong"?  I wasted the reader's time.  RB 66.217.117.160 (talk) 06:21, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

"between 26–30 June" is wrong in my book too, for what it's worth. It should be "between 26 and 30 June" or "from 26–30 June", unless one considers "between x to y" to be good idiomatic English. Dave.Dunford (talk) 11:37, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Keyboards

Would it be out of place to state where the hyphen is found on common keyboards?LeadSongDog come howl 05:06, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Use of hyphen vs. hyphen‐minus in article

Should the article perhaps use the hyphen (“‐”, U+2010) instead of the hyphen‐minus (“-”, U+002D)? 98.208.53.35 (talk) 03:21, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/developers/fdsspec/punc.aspx tells developers to implement them the same way.  RB 66.217.117.160 (talk) 06:36, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Losing the hyphen?

Lose the hyphen - Little changes can set people off. Seems that the modern usage of hyphens in English is more complicated than what most people thought. Komitsuki (talk) 14:23, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Y with two lines through it?

Just out of curiosity when I first load the hyphen entry the actual hyphen momentarily shows up as a character that looks like a capital Y with two horizontal lines through it. I was wondering if anyone knows why that is. --Jccalhoun (talk) 19:37, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

You mean the (big) hyphen in the infobox? Interesting. The sign you describe is ¥ yen/yuan sign (which is in the infobox), but I cannot see why it would show. Probably just a flash-of-halfway-the-(HTML/CSS)-workings. -DePiep (talk) 19:56, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I mean in the actual text of the entry itself. It doesn't to it all the time but I noticed it a couple of times. The first time I noticed it wasn't on wikipedia. My real name has a hyphen and one day I checked the google analytics for my blog. On the page that shows search terms people used to get to my site I saw my name with that unusual character in it where the hyphen should be. That led me to search for it and when i got here to wikipedia I saw that character momentarily before it turned to a hyphen. Just now on Firefox 5 on Win7 32bit I highlighted the hyphen on the entry and viewed the selection source and the html uses that symbol (I don't know if it will show up on everyone's system but if so this is it: ‐ )When I cut an paste the yen symbol it actually looks slightly different: ¥ vs. ‐ Any way, it isn't a big deal. I was just curious about it. Jccalhoun (talk) 03:29, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

I have a long history of seeing the yen sign show up for various "unavailable" characters, such as a missing font, etc. I also see an empty box a lot in similar situations. I've never figured out what triggers one vs the other, but there must be some reason in terms of their respective positions in code charts or summat.

That said, what ARTICLE are you viewing on Wikipedia? The fact that your yen-sign page (left side of screenshot) REDIRECTS to the Hyphen page is curious, indeed, but less so perhaps without knowing what the first page IS. 66.105.218.18 (talk) 08:55, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

It is interesting. Below are two Wikipedia screenshots viewed from Firefox 7.0.1 with the same phenomenon which consistently appears with Firefox (but not IE). —  AjaxSmack  20:32, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Unable to parse

I am unable to parse the following sentence, which appears near the top of the article: "However for ease commonly; rather, different manuals of style prescribe different usage guidelines." CountMacula (talk) 00:05, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Removed funky Strunk and White bit

In this diff, a drive-by anon added a bit of nonsense that was recently noticed and tweaked a bit. I took it out. If anyone wants it back, we should see what Strunk and White actually say there. Dicklyon (talk) 05:20, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

The oddness of the template image

When the article page loads, the hyphen image in the main template box is composed of a vertical line on the left and an angled forward slash about midway up on the right, like a lower case "k" minus the leading leg. If I scroll down the page then return to that main template box, the lower half of the vertical line has vanished so that the image looks rather like a "v" tilted towards the right. The image in that main box needs repair. Thanks, Wordreader (talk) 05:41, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Hyphenating fractions

I must say it's a bit strange that our Hyphen article says something that's out of tune with our own Manual of Style. Namely, the article here says:

Hyphens are also used in spelled-out fractions as adjectives (but not as nouns), such as two-thirds majority and one-eighth portion.

However, our Manual of Style simply states:

Spelled-out two-word numerals from 21 to 99 are hyphenated (e.g. fifty-six), as are fractions (e.g. seven-eighths).

Can we fix this mismatch? Perhaps this just differs from style guide to style guide (I gather that Chicago requires hyphens for all fractions), so maybe the statement in the article here should not be so absolute. -- tariqabjotu 13:57, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Notice of RFC

Talk:Common_English_usage_misconceptions/Archive 2 #RfC:_Hyphens.2FDashes_misconception

Please help improve this related article. Comments should be placed at that Talk page rather than here.

Military Usage

Should there be a section or mention of other names for the hyphen? In the military, specifically the U.S. Navy, the hyphen is commonly spoken as "Tack". "So example-place" would be spoken as "example tack place". This is common when quoting web address or reading out something that has to be copied down verbatim. Tovias (talk) 19:56, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Eng 1Z

sorohity -hype- Socialvaccine (talk) 06:04, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Did you mean sorority?
— | Gareth Griffith-Jones | The Welsh Buzzard | — 09:10, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Question

This article is tagged for multiple issues. How is it a B-Class article, then?