‘Hyphenation’ is the technical term for employing a hyphen to link two words together. Hyphenated words can include compound nouns, compound verbs or compound adjectives. In this context ‘compound’ simply means that two separate words have been joined together to form one word.
Compound Adjectives
Usually, if you are using two words together to describe something, you should make them into a compound adjective by using a hyphen. Compound adjectives are formed by joining adjective and participle, e.g. ‘good-looking’, noun and participle, e.g. ‘power-driven’ or noun and adjective, e.g. ‘accident-prone’. Some more examples of compound adjectives include:
‘Free-range’, ‘part-time’, ‘long-term’ and ‘well-known’.
Remember that when used as an adjective, the compound ‘nineteenth-century’ should not be spelled with a capital ‘C’ in century as it is elsewhere.
Compound adjectives can also be comprised of more than two words, and are more like phrases, for example:
‘Tongue-in-cheek’, ‘happy-go-lucky’ and ‘devil-may-care’.
Compound phrases such as the examples given above and compound adjectives formed with the word ‘well’ should only be hyphenated if they appear before what they are describing in a sentence. For example, these two examples are both correct:
‘Well-known artist Whistler…’
‘The artist Whistler was well known…’
Compound Nouns and Verbs
It is slightly more difficult to know when to hyphenate nouns and verbs than it is adjectives. Tradition has it that most nouns and verbs beginning with the prefixes ‘non’, ‘pre’, ‘de’ or ‘re’ should be hyphenated. However, this has become much less common over time and is now sometimes considered old-fashioned.
Whereas previously they would have been written with a hyphen, it would now be incorrect to use one in the words, ‘precede’, ‘refresh’, ‘prewashed’ or ‘repainted’. This decline in use of the hyphen can even be seen in the disappearance of the hyphen from rap singer Jay Z’s name, which contained a hyphen until it was dropped in 2013.
In some cases, neglecting to include a hyphen can change the meaning of a sentence. Take, for example:
1) ‘I once saw a man-eating crocodile’
2) ‘I once saw a man eating crocodile’
The first sentence mentions a crocodile which is described by the adjective ‘man-eating’. The second, non-hyphenated, sentence describes a man who was eating crocodile. Lack of a hyphen can lead to ambiguity in meaning. Rules about which words should be hyphenated can very between institutions, so be sure to double check in your style guide.
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