Hyphen (architecture), Hyphens
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The hyphen is a
punctuation Punctuation (or sometimes interpunction) is the use of spacing, conventional signs (called punctuation marks), and certain typographical devices as aids to the understanding and correct reading of written text, whether read silently or aloud. An ...
mark used to join
word A word is a basic element of language that carries an semantics, objective or pragmatics, practical semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of w ...
s and to separate
syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
s of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. ''Son-in-law'' is an example of a hyphenated word. The hyphen is sometimes confused with
dash The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...
es (
en dash The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...
,
em dash The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...
and others), which are wider, or with the
minus sign The plus and minus signs, and , are mathematical symbols used to represent the notions of positive and negative, respectively. In addition, represents the operation of addition, which results in a sum, while represents subtraction, resulti ...
, which is also wider and usually drawn a little higher to match the crossbar in the
plus sign The plus and minus signs, and , are mathematical symbols used to represent the notions of positive and negative, respectively. In addition, represents the operation of addition, which results in a sum, while represents subtraction, result ...
. As an orthographic concept, the hyphen is a single entity. In
character encoding Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to Graphics, graphical character (computing), characters, especially the written characters of Language, human language, allowing them to be Data storage, stored, Data communication, transmi ...
for use with computers, it is represented in
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
by any of several
characters Character or Characters may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...
. These include the dual-use
hyphen-minus The hyphen-minus is the most commonly used type of hyphen, widely used in digital documents. It is the only character that looks like a minus sign or a dash in many character sets such as ASCII or on most keyboards, so it is also used as such. ...
, the
soft hyphen In computing and typesetting, a soft hyphen (ISO 8859: 0xAD, Unicode , HTML: ­ or ­ or ­) or syllable hyphen (EBCDIC: 0xCA), abbreviated SHY, is a code point reserved in some coded character sets for the purpose of breaki ...
, the nonbreaking hyphen, and an unambiguous form known familiarly as the "Unicode hyphen", shown at the top of the infobox on this page. The character most often used to represent a hyphen (and the one produced by the key on a keyboard) is called the "hyphen-minus" by Unicode, deriving from the original
ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because of ...
standard, where it was called "hyphen(minus)".


Etymology

The word is derived from Ancient Greek (), contracted from (), "in one" (literally "under one"). An () was an
undertie The tie is a symbol in the shape of an arc similar to a large breve, used in Greek, phonetic alphabets, and Z notation. It can be used between two characters with spacing as punctuation, non-spacing as a diacritic, or (underneath) as a proofread ...
-like sign written below two adjacent letters to indicate that they belong to the same word when it was necessary to avoid ambiguity, before
word spacing Word spacing in typography is space between words, as contrasted with letter-spacing (space between letters of words) and sentence spacing (space between sentences). Typographers may modify the spacing of letters or words in a body of type to aid ...
was practiced.


History

The first known documentation of the hyphen is in the grammatical works of
Dionysius Thrax Dionysius Thrax ( grc-gre, Διονύσιος ὁ Θρᾷξ ''Dionýsios ho Thrâix'', 170–90 BC) was a Greek grammarian and a pupil of Aristarchus of Samothrace. He was long considered to be the author of the earliest grammatical text on the G ...
. At the time hyphenation was joining two words that would otherwise be read separately by a low tie mark between the two words.Nicolas, Nick.
Greek Unicode Issues: Punctuation
". 2005. Accessed 7 October 2014.
In Greek these marks were known as ''
enotikon The tie is a symbol in the shape of an arc similar to a large breve, used in Greek, phonetic alphabets, and Z notation. It can be used between two characters with spacing as punctuation, non-spacing as a diacritic, or (underneath) as a proofrea ...
'', officially
romanized Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...
as a hyphen. 'Ellīnikós Organismós Typopoíīsīs'', "Hellenic Organization for Standardization"]. [''ELOT 743, 2ī Ekdosī'', "ELOT 743, "]. ELOT (Athens), 2001. With the introduction of letter spacing in the Middle Ages, the hyphen, still written beneath the text, reversed its meaning. Scribes used the mark to connect two words that had been incorrectly separated by a space. This era also saw the introduction of the marginal hyphen, for words broken across lines. The modern format of the hyphen originated with
Johannes Gutenberg Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (; – 3 February 1468) was a German inventor and Artisan, craftsman who introduced letterpress printing to Europe with his movable type, movable-type printing press. Though not the first of its ki ...
of Mainz, Germany, with the publication of his 42-line
Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
. His tools did not allow for a
sublinear In linear algebra, a sublinear function (or functional as is more often used in functional analysis), also called a quasi-seminorm or a Banach functional, on a vector space X is a real-valued function with only some of the properties of a seminorm. ...
hyphen, and he thus moved it to the middle of the line. Examination of an original copy on
vellum Vellum is prepared animal skin or membrane, typically used as writing material. Parchment is another term for this material, from which vellum is sometimes distinguished, when it is made from calfskin, as opposed to that made from other anima ...
(Hubay index #35) in the U. S. Library of Congress shows that Gutenberg's movable type was set justified in a uniform style, 42 equal lines per page. The Gutenberg printing press required words made up of individual letters of type to be held in place by a surrounding nonprinting rigid frame. Gutenberg solved the problem of making each line the same length to fit the frame by inserting a hyphen as the last element at the right-side margin. This interrupted the letters in the last word, requiring the remaining letters be carried over to the start of the line below. His
double hyphen In Latin script, the double hyphen is a punctuation mark that consists of two parallel hyphens. It was a development of the earlier , which developed from a Central European variant of the virgule slash, originally a form of scratch comma. Si ...
, , appears throughout the Bible as a short, double line inclined to the right at a 60-degree angle.


Use in English

The
English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...
does not have definitive hyphenation rules, though various
style guide A style guide or manual of style is a set of standards for the writing, formatting, and design of documents. It is often called a style sheet, although that term also has multiple other meanings. The standards can be applied either for gene ...
s provide detailed usage recommendations and have a significant amount of overlap in what they advise. Hyphens are mostly used to break single words into parts or to join ordinarily separate words into single words. Spaces are not placed between a hyphen and either of the elements it connects except when using a suspended or "hanging" hyphen that stands in for a repeated word (e.g., ''nineteenth- and writers''). Style conventions that apply to hyphens (and dashes) have evolved to support ease of reading in complex constructions; editors often accept deviations if they aid rather than hinder easy comprehension. The use of the hyphen in
English compound A compound is a word composed of more than one free morpheme. The English language, like many others, uses compounds frequently. English compounds may be classified in several ways, such as the word classes or the semantic relationship of their ...
nouns and verbs has, in general, been steadily declining. Compounds that might once have been hyphenated are increasingly left with spaces or are combined into one word. Reflecting this changing usage, in 2007, the sixth edition of the ''
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary The ''Shorter Oxford English Dictionary'' (''SOED'') is an English language dictionary published by the Oxford University Press. The SOED is a two-volume abridgement of the twenty-volume ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED''). Print editions ...
'' removed the hyphens from 16,000 entries, such as ''fig-leaf'' (now ''fig leaf''), ''pot-belly'' (now ''pot belly''), and ''pigeon-hole'' (now ''pigeonhole''). The increasing prevalence of computer technology and the advent of the Internet have given rise to a subset of common nouns that might have been hyphenated in the past (e.g., ''
toolbar The toolbar, also called a bar or standard toolbar (originally known as ribbon) is a graphical control element on which on-screen icons can be used. A toolbar often allows for quick access to functions that are commonly used in the program. Some ...
'', ''
hyperlink In computing, a hyperlink, or simply a link, is a digital reference to data that the user can follow or be guided by clicking or tapping. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text wit ...
'', and ''
pastebin A pastebin or text storage site is a type of online content-hosting service where users can store plain text (e.g. source code snippet (programming), snippets for code review via Internet Relay Chat (IRC)). The first pastebin was the eponymous ...
''). Despite decreased use, hyphenation remains the norm in certain compound-modifier constructions and, among some authors, with certain prefixes (see
below Below may refer to: *Earth *Ground (disambiguation) *Soil *Floor *Bottom (disambiguation) Bottom may refer to: Anatomy and sex * Bottom (BDSM), the partner in a BDSM who takes the passive, receiving, or obedient role, to that of the top or ...
). Hyphenation is also routinely used as part of
syllabification Syllabification () or syllabication (), also known as hyphenation, is the separation of a word into syllables, whether spoken, written or signed. Overview The written separation into syllables is usually marked by a hyphen when using English or ...
in justified texts to avoid unsightly spacing (especially in
columns A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member. ...
with narrow
line length In typography, line length is the width of a block of typeset text, usually measured in units of length like inches or points or in characters per line (in which case it is a measure). A block of text or paragraph has a maximum line length that ...
s, as when used with
newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports a ...
s).


Separating


Justification and line-wrapping

When flowing text, it is sometimes preferable to break a word into two so that it continues on another line rather than moving the entire word to the next line. The word may be divided at the nearest break point between syllables (
syllabification Syllabification () or syllabication (), also known as hyphenation, is the separation of a word into syllables, whether spoken, written or signed. Overview The written separation into syllables is usually marked by a hyphen when using English or ...
) and a hyphen inserted to indicate that the letters form a word fragment, rather than a full word. This allows more efficient use of paper, allows flush appearance of right-side margins ( justification) without oddly large word spaces, and decreases the problem of
rivers A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of wate ...
. This kind of hyphenation is most useful when the width of the column (called the "line length" in typography) is very narrow. For example: Rules (or guidelines) for correct hyphenation vary between languages, and may be complex, and they can interact with other orthographic and
typesetting Typesetting is the composition of text by means of arranging physical ''type'' (or ''sort'') in mechanical systems or ''glyphs'' in digital systems representing ''characters'' (letters and other symbols).Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random Ho ...
practices.
Hyphenation algorithm Syllabification () or syllabication (), also known as hyphenation, is the separation of a word into syllables, whether spoken, written or signed. Overview The written separation into syllables is usually marked by a hyphen when using English or ...
s, when employed in concert with dictionaries, are sufficient for all but the most formal texts. It may be necessary to distinguish an incidental line-break hyphen from one integral to a word being mentioned (as when used in a
dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies ...
) or present in an original text being quoted (when in a
critical edition Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts or of printed books. Such texts may range in da ...
), not only to control its
word wrap Line breaking, also known as word wrapping, is breaking a section of text into lines so that it will fit into the available width of a page, window or other display area. In text display, line wrap is continuing on a new line when a line is ful ...
behavior (which
encoding In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communication ...
handles with hard and soft hyphens having the same
glyph A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
) but also to differentiate appearance (with a different glyph). ''
Webster's Third New International Dictionary ''Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged'' (commonly known as ''Webster's Third'', or ''W3'') was published in September 1961. It was edited by Philip Babcock Gove and a team of lexicographers who spent 757 ...
'' and the ''
Chambers Dictionary The ''Chambers Dictionary'' (''TCD'') was first published by William Chambers (publisher), William and Robert Chambers (publisher born 1802), Robert Chambers as ''Chambers's English Dictionary'' in 1872. It was an expanded version of ''Chambers' ...
'' use a
double hyphen In Latin script, the double hyphen is a punctuation mark that consists of two parallel hyphens. It was a development of the earlier , which developed from a Central European variant of the virgule slash, originally a form of scratch comma. Si ...
for integral hyphens and a single hyphen for line-breaks, whereas Kromhout's Afrikaans–English dictionary uses the opposite convention. The ''
Concise Oxford Dictionary The ''Concise Oxford English Dictionary'' (officially titled ''The Concise Oxford Dictionary'' until 2002, and widely abbreviated ''COD'' or ''COED'') is probably the best-known of the 'smaller' Oxford dictionaries. The latest edition contains ...
(fifth edition)'' suggested repeating an integral hyphen at the start of the following line.


Prefixes and suffixes

Prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the Word stem, stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy'' ...
es (such as ''de-'', ''pre-'', ''re-'', and ''non-''A fairly comprehensive list, although not exhaustive, is given at Prefix > List of English derivational prefixes.) and
suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...
es (such as ', ', ', and ') are sometimes hyphenated, especially when the unhyphenated spelling resembles another word or when the
affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ar ...
ation is deemed misinterpretable, ambiguous, or somehow "odd-looking" (for example, having two consecutive
monograph A monograph is a specialist work of writing (in contrast to reference works) or exhibition on a single subject or an aspect of a subject, often by a single author or artist, and usually on a scholarly subject. In library cataloging, ''monograph ...
s that look like the digraphs of English, like e+a, e+e, or e+i). However, the unhyphenated style, which is also called ''closed up'' or ''solid'', is usually preferred, particularly when the
derivative In mathematics, the derivative of a function of a real variable measures the sensitivity to change of the function value (output value) with respect to a change in its argument (input value). Derivatives are a fundamental tool of calculus. F ...
has been relatively familiarized or popularized through extensive use in various contexts. As a
rule of thumb In English, the phrase ''rule of thumb'' refers to an approximate method for doing something, based on practical experience rather than theory. This usage of the phrase can be traced back to the 17th century and has been associated with various t ...
, affixes are not hyphenated unless the lack of a hyphen would hurt clarity. The hyphen may be used between vowel letters (e.g., ''ee'', ''ea'', ''ei'') to indicate that they do not form a digraph. Some words have both hyphenated and unhyphenated variants: ''/deescalate'', ''/cooperation'', ''/reexamine'', ''/deemphasize'', and so on. Words often lose their hyphen as they become more common, such as ''
email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...
'' instead of '. When there are tripled letters, the hyphenated variant of these words is often more common (as in ' instead of ''shelllike''). Closed-up style is avoided in some cases: possible
homograph A homograph (from the el, ὁμός, ''homós'', "same" and γράφω, ''gráphō'', "write") is a word that shares the same written form as another word but has a different meaning. However, some dictionaries insist that the words must also ...
s, such as ''
recreation Recreation is an activity of leisure, leisure being discretionary time. The "need to do something for recreation" is an essential element of human biology and psychology. Recreational activities are often done for enjoyment, amusement, or pleasur ...
'' (fun or sport) versus ' (the act of creating again), ''retreat'' (turn back) versus ' (give
therapy A therapy or medical treatment (often abbreviated tx, Tx, or Tx) is the attempted remediation of a health problem, usually following a medical diagnosis. As a rule, each therapy has indications and contraindications. There are many different ...
again), and ' (not in
ion An ion () is an atom or molecule with a net electrical charge. The charge of an electron is considered to be negative by convention and this charge is equal and opposite to the charge of a proton, which is considered to be positive by conven ...
form) versus ''unionized'' (organized into
trade union A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ( ...
s); combinations with
proper Proper may refer to: Mathematics * Proper map, in topology, a property of continuous function between topological spaces, if inverse images of compact subsets are compact * Proper morphism, in algebraic geometry, an analogue of a proper map for ...
nouns or adjectives (', ');.
acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
s (', '); or numbers (', '). Although ' is still hyphenated by both ''Dorland's'' and ''Merriam-Webster's Medical'', the solid (that is, unhyphenated) styling (''protooncogene'') is a common variant, particularly among oncologists and geneticists. A diaeresis may also be used in a like fashion, either to separate and mark off monographs (as in ''coöperation'') or to signalize a
vocalic A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
terminal e (for example, '' Brontë''). This use of the diaeresis peaked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but it was never applied extensively across the language: only a handful of diaereses, including ''coöperation'' and ''Brontë'', are encountered with any appreciable frequency in English; thus ''reëxamine'', ''reïterate'', ''deëmphasize'', etc. are seldom encountered. In borrowings from Modern French, whose
orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...
utilizes the diaeresis as a means to differentiate
grapheme In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system. The word ''grapheme'' is derived and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other names of emic units. The study of graphemes is called ''graphemics' ...
s, various English dictionaries list the dieresis as optional (as in ''naive'' and ''naïve'') despite the juxtaposition of a and i.


Syllabification and spelling

Hyphens are occasionally used to denote
syllabification Syllabification () or syllabication (), also known as hyphenation, is the separation of a word into syllables, whether spoken, written or signed. Overview The written separation into syllables is usually marked by a hyphen when using English or ...
, as in ''syl-la-bi-fi-ca-tion''. Various British and North American dictionaries use an
interpunct An interpunct , also known as an interpoint, middle dot, middot and centered dot or centred dot, is a punctuation mark consisting of a vertically centered dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin script. (Word-separating spaces did no ...
, sometimes called a "middle dot" or "hyphenation point", for this purpose, as in ''syl·la·bi·fi·ca·tion''. This allows the hyphen to be reserved only for places where a hard hyphen is intended (for example, ', ', '). Similarly, hyphens may be used to indicate how a word is being or should be spelled. For example, ''W-O-R-D spells "word"''. In nineteenth-century American literature, hyphens were also used irregularly to divide syllables in words from indigenous North American languages, without regard for etymology or pronunciation, such as "Shuh-shuh-gah" (from
Ojibwe The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains. According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...
''zhashagi'', "blue heron") in ''
The Song of Hiawatha ''The Song of Hiawatha'' is an 1855 epic poem in trochaic tetrameter by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow which features Native American characters. The epic relates the fictional adventures of an Ojibwe warrior named Hiawatha and the tragedy of his l ...
''. This usage is now rare and proscribed, except in some place names such as Ah-gwah-ching.


Joining


Compound modifiers

Compound modifier A compound modifier (also called a compound adjective, phrasal adjective, or adjectival phrase) is a compound of two or more attributive words: that is, two or more words that collectively modify a noun. Compound modifiers are grammatically equival ...
s are groups of two or more words that jointly modify the meaning of another word. When a compound modifier other than an
adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...
adjective In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Tra ...
combination appears ''before'' a term, the compound modifier is often hyphenated to prevent misunderstanding, such as in '' player'' or '' paintings''. Without the hyphen, there is potential confusion about whether the writer means a "player of American football" or an "American player of football" and whether the writer means paintings that are "little celebrated" or "celebrated paintings" that are little. Compound modifiers can extend to three or more words, as in '' candy'', and can be adverbial as well as adjectival ('' frightening''). However, if the compound is a familiar one, it is usually unhyphenated. For example, some style guides prefer the construction ''high school students'', to '' students''. Although the expression is technically ambiguous ("students of a high school"/"school students who are high"), it would normally be formulated differently if other than the first meaning were intended. Noun–noun compound modifiers may also be written without a hyphen when no confusion is likely: ''grade point average'' and ''department store manager''. When a compound modifier ''follows'' the term to which it applies, a hyphen is typically not used if the compound is a temporary compound. For example, "that gentleman is well respected", not "that gentleman is well-respected"; or "a patient-centered approach was used" but "the approach was patient centered." But permanent compounds, found as headwords in dictionaries, are treated as invariable, so if they are hyphenated in the cited dictionary, the hyphenation will be used in both attributive and predicative positions. For example, "A cost-effective method was used" and "The method was cost-effective" (''cost-effective'' is a permanent compound that is hyphenated as a headword in various dictionaries). When one of the parts of the modifier is a
proper noun A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (''Africa'', ''Jupiter'', ''Sarah'', ''Microsoft)'' as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (''continent, ...
or a
proper adjective English orthography sometimes uses the term proper adjective to mean adjectives that take initial capital letters, and common adjective to mean those that do not. For example, a person from India is Indian—''Indian'' is a proper adjective. Etymol ...
, there is no hyphen (e.g., "a South American actor"). When the first modifier in a compound is an adverb ending in ''-ly'' (e.g., "a poorly written novel"), various style guides advise no hyphen. However, some do allow for this use. For example, ''
The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Econo ...
Style Guide'' advises: "Adverbs do not need to be linked to participles or adjectives by hyphens in simple constructions... Less common adverbs, including all those that end ''-ly'', are less likely to need hyphens." In the 19th century, it was common to hyphenate adverb–adjective modifiers with the adverb ending in ''-ly'' (e.g., "a craftily-constructed chair"). However, this has become rare. For example, ''wholly owned subsidiary'' and ''quickly moving vehicle'' are unambiguous, because the adverbs clearly modify the adjectives: "quickly" cannot modify "vehicle". However, if an adverb can also function as an adjective, then a hyphen may be or should be used for clarity, depending on the style guide. For example, the phrase '' reasons'' ("reasons that are more important") is distinguished from ''more important reasons'' ("additional important reasons"), where ''more'' is an adjective. Similarly, '' scenery'' (with a mass-noun) is distinct from ''more beautiful scenery''. (In contrast, the hyphen in "a reason" is not necessary, because the syntax cannot be misinterpreted.) A few short and common words—such as ''well'', ''ill'', ''little'', and ''much''—attract special attention in this category. The hyphen in "well- ast_participlednoun", such as in " well-differentiated cells", might reasonably be judged superfluous (the syntax is unlikely to be misinterpreted), yet plenty of style guides call for it. Because ''early'' has both adverbial and adjectival senses, its hyphenation can attract attention; some editors, due to comparison with ''advanced-stage disease'' and ''adult-onset disease'', like the parallelism of ''early-stage disease'' and ''early-onset disease''. Similarly, the hyphen in ''little-celebrated paintings'' clarifies that one is not speaking of little paintings. Hyphens are usually used to connect numbers and words in modifying phrases. Such is the case when used to describe dimensional measurements of weight, size, and time, under the rationale that, like other compound modifiers, they take hyphens in attributive position (before the modified noun), although not in predicative position (after the modified noun). This is applied whether numerals or words are used for the numbers. Thus '' woman'' and '' woman'' or '' wingspan'' and '' wingspan'', but ''the woman is 28 years old'' and ''a wingspan of 32 feet''. However, with symbols for SI units (such as '' m'' or '' kg'')—in contrast to the ''names'' of these units (such as ''
metre The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its pref ...
'' or ''
kilogram The kilogram (also kilogramme) is the unit of mass in the International System of Units (SI), having the unit symbol kg. It is a widely used measure in science, engineering and commerce worldwide, and is often simply called a kilo colloquially ...
'')—the numerical value is always separated from it with a space: ''a 25 kg sphere''. When the unit names are spelled out, this recommendation does not apply: ''a sphere'', ''a roll of film''. In spelled-out
fractions A fraction (from la, fractus, "broken") represents a part of a whole or, more generally, any number of equal parts. When spoken in everyday English, a fraction describes how many parts of a certain size there are, for example, one-half, eight ...
, hyphens are usually used when the fraction is used as an adjective but not when it is used as a noun: thus '' majority'' and '' portion'' but ''I drank two thirds of the bottle'' or ''I kept three quarters of it for myself''. However, at least one major style guide hyphenates spelled-out fractions invariably (whether adjective or noun). In English, an
en dash The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...
, , sometimes replaces the hyphen in hyphenated compounds if either of its constituent parts is already hyphenated or contains a space (for example, ''San Francisco–area residents'', ''hormone receptor–positive cells'', ''cell cycle–related factors'', and ''public-school–private-school rivalries''). A commonly used alternative style is the hyphenated string (''hormone-receptor-positive cells'', ''cell-cycle-related factors''). (For other aspects of en dash–versus–hyphen use, see '' Dash § En dash''.)


Object–verbal-noun compounds

When an object is compounded with a verbal noun, such as '' egg-beater'' (a tool that beats eggs), the result is sometimes hyphenated. Some authors do this consistently, others only for disambiguation; in this case, ''egg-beater, egg beater,'' and ''eggbeater'' are all common. An example of an ambiguous phrase appears in ''they stood near a group of alien lovers'', which without a hyphen implies that they stood near a group of lovers who were aliens; ''they stood near a group of alien-lovers'' clarifies that they stood near a group of people who loved aliens, as "alien" can be either an adjective or a noun. On the other hand, in the phrase ''a hungry pizza-lover'', the hyphen will often be omitted (a hungry pizza lover), as "pizza" cannot be an adjective and the phrase is therefore unambiguous. Similarly, ''a man-eating shark'' is nearly the opposite of ''a man eating shark''; the first refers to a shark that eats people, and the second to a man who eats
shark meat Shark meat is a seafood consisting of the flesh of sharks. Several sharks are fished for human consumption, such as porbeagles, shortfin mako shark, requiem shark, and thresher shark, among others. Shark meat is popular in Asia, where it is of ...
. ''A government-monitoring program'' is a program that monitors the government, whereas ''a government monitoring program'' is a government program that monitors something else.


Personal names

Some married couples compose a new
surname In some cultures, a surname, family name, or last name is the portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family, tribe or community. Practices vary by culture. The family name may be placed at either the start of a person's full name ...
(sometimes referred to as a
double-barrelled name A double-barrelled name is a type of compound surname, typically featuring two words (occasionally more), often joined by a hyphen. Examples of some notable people with double-barrelled names include Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Sacha Baron C ...
) for their new family by combining their two surnames with a hyphen. Jane Doe and John Smith might become Jane and John Smith-Doe, or Doe-Smith, for instance. In some countries only the woman hyphenates her birth surname, appending her husband's surname. With already-hyphenated names, some parts are typically dropped. For example, Aaron Johnson and Samantha Taylor-Wood became
Aaron Taylor-Johnson Aaron Perry Taylor-Johnson (né Johnson; born 13 June 1990) is an English actor. He is best known for his portrayal of the title character in '' Kick-Ass'' (2010) and its 2013 sequel, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) character Pietro Ma ...
and
Sam Taylor-Johnson Samantha Louise Taylor-Johnson OBE (née Taylor-Wood; 4 March 1967) is a British filmmaker and photographer. Her directorial feature film debut was 2009's ''Nowhere Boy'', a film based on the childhood experiences of The Beatles songwriter an ...
. Not all hyphenated surnames are the result of marriage. For example
Julia Louis-Dreyfus Julia Scarlett Elizabeth Louis-Dreyfus ( ; born January 13, 1961) is an American actress, comedian, and producer who worked on the comedy television series ''Saturday Night Live'' (1982–1985), ''Seinfeld'' (1989–1998), ''The New Adventures ...
is a descendant of Louis Lemlé Dreyfus whose son was Léopold Louis-Dreyfus.


Other compounds

Connecting hyphens are used in a large number of miscellaneous compounds, other than modifiers, such as in ''lily-of-the-valley'', ''cock-a-hoop'', ''clever-clever'', ''tittle-tattle'' and ''orang-utan''. Use is often dictated by convention rather than fixed rules, and hyphenation styles may vary between authors; for example, ''orang-utan'' is also written as ''orangutan'' or ''orang utan'', and ''lily-of-the-valley'' may be hyphenated or not.


Suspended hyphens

A suspended hyphen (also called a suspensive hyphen or hanging hyphen, or less commonly a dangling or floating hyphen) may be used when a single base word is used with separate, consecutive, hyphenated words that are connected by "and", "or", or "to". For example, ''short-term and long-term plans'' may be written as ''short- and long-term plans.'' This usage is now common and specifically recommended in some style guides.E.g. Suspended hyphens are also used, though less commonly, when the base word comes first, such as in "investor-owned and ". Uses such as "applied and sociolinguistics" (instead of "applied linguistics and sociolinguistics") are frowned upon; the Indiana University style guide uses this example and says "Do not 'take a shortcut' when the first expression is ordinarily open" (i.e., ordinarily two separate words). This is different, however, from instances where prefixes that are normally closed up (styled solidly) are used suspensively. For example, ' becomes ' (not ') when suspended. Some editors prefer to avoid suspending such pairs, choosing instead to write out both words in full.


Other uses

A hyphen may be used to connect groups of numbers, such as in
dates Date or dates may refer to: *Date (fruit), the fruit of the date palm (''Phoenix dactylifera'') Social activity *Dating, a form of courtship involving social activity, with the aim of assessing a potential partner **Group dating *Play date, an ...
(see § Usage in date notation),
telephone numbers A telephone number is a sequence of digits assigned to a landline telephone subscriber station connected to a telephone line or to a wireless electronic telephony device, such as a radio telephone or a mobile telephone, or to other devices f ...
or sports scores. It can also be used to indicate a range of values, although many styles prefer an en dash (see ). It is sometimes used to hide letters in words ( filleting for redaction or censoring), as in "
G-d Judaism considers some names of God so holy that, once written, they should not be erased: YHWH, Adonai, El ("God"), Elohim ("God," a plural noun), Shaddai ("Almighty"), and Tzevaot (" fHosts"); some also include Ehyeh ("I Will Be").This is the ...
", although an en dash can be used as well ("G–d"). It is often used in
reduplication In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. The classic observation on the semantics of reduplication is Edwa ...
. Due to their similar appearances, hyphens are sometimes mistakenly used where an en dash or em dash would be more appropriate.


Varied meanings

Some stark examples of semantic changes caused by the placement of hyphens to mark attributive phrases: * ''Disease-causing poor nutrition'' is poor nutrition that causes disease. ** ''Disease causing poor nutrition'' is a disease that causes poor nutrition. * A ''hard-working man'' is a man who works hard. ** A ''hard working man'' is a working man who is tough. * A ''man-eating shark'' is a shark that eats humans. ** A ''man eating shark'' is a man who is eating shark meat. * ''Three-hundred-year-old trees'' are an indeterminate number of trees that are each 300 years old. ** ''Three hundred-year-old trees'' are three trees that are each 100 years old. ** ''Three hundred year-old trees'' are 300 trees that are each a year old.


Use in computing


Hyphen-minuses

In the
ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because of ...
character encoding, the hyphen (or minus) is character 4510. As
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
is identical to ASCII (the 1967 version) for all encodings up to 12710, the number 4510 (2D16) is also assigned to this character in Unicode, where it is denoted as . Unicode has, in addition, other encodings for minus and hyphen characters: and , respectively. The unambiguous at U+2010 is generally inconvenient to enter on most keyboards and the glyphs for this hyphen and the hyphen-minus are identical in most fonts (
Lucida Sans Unicode In digital typography, Lucida Sans Unicode OpenType font from the design studio of Bigelow & HolmesAll Bigelow & Holmes Lucida typefaces are distributed by the designers througThe Lucida Fonts Storeand a subset of Lucida fonts is distributed bAsc ...
is one of the few exceptions). Consequently, use of the hyphen-minus as the hyphen character is very common. Even the
Unicode Standard Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, whic ...
regularly uses the hyphen-minus rather than the U+2010 hyphen. The hyphen-minus has limited use in indicating subtraction; for example, compare (minus) and (hyphen-minus) — in most typefaces, the
glyph A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
for hyphen-minus will not have the optimal width, thickness, or vertical position, whereas the minus character is typically designed so that it does. Nevertheless, in many spreadsheet and programming applications the hyphen-minus must be typed to indicate subtraction, as use of the Unicode minus sign will not be recognised. The hyphen-minus is often used instead of dashes or minus signs in situations where the latter characters are unavailable (such as type-written or ASCII-only text), where they take effort to enter (via
dialog box The dialog box (also called dialogue box (non-U.S. English), message box or simply dialog) is a graphical control element in the form of a small window that communicates information to the user and prompts them for a response. Dialog boxes are ...
es or multi-key
keyboard shortcut computing, a keyboard shortcut also known as hotkey is a series of one or several keys to quickly invoke a software program or perform a preprogrammed action. This action may be part of the standard functionality of the operating system or ...
s), or when the writer is unaware of the distinction. Consequently, some writers use two or three hyphen-minuses ( or ) to represent an em dash. In the TeX typesetting languages, a single hyphen-minus (-) renders a hyphen, a single hyphen-minus in math mode ($-$) renders a minus sign, two hyphen-minuses (--) renders an en dash, and three hyphen-minuses (---) renders an em dash. The hyphen-minus character is also often used when specifying
command-line option A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invoking executables and pro ...
s. The character is usually followed by one or more letters that indicate specific actions. Typically it is called a dash or switch in this context. Various implementations of the
getopt Getopt is a C library function used to parse command-line options of the Unix/POSIX style. It is a part of the POSIX specification, and is universal to Unix-like systems. It is also the name of a Unix program for parsing command line arguments i ...
function to parse command-line options additionally allow the use of two hyphen-minus characters, , to specify long option names that are more descriptive than their single-letter equivalents. Another use of hyphens is that employed by programs written with pipelining in mind: a single hyphen may be recognized
in lieu Many words in the English vocabulary are of French origin, most coming from the Anglo-Norman spoken by the upper classes in England for several hundred years after the Norman Conquest, before the language settled into what became Modern Engli ...
of a filename, with the hyphen then serving as an indicator that a standard stream, instead of a file, is to be worked with.


Soft and hard hyphens

Although software (
hyphenation algorithm Syllabification () or syllabication (), also known as hyphenation, is the separation of a word into syllables, whether spoken, written or signed. Overview The written separation into syllables is usually marked by a hyphen when using English or ...
s) can often automatically make decisions on when to hyphenate a word at a line break, it is also sometimes useful for the user to be able to insert cues for those decisions (which are dynamic in the online medium, given that text can be reflowed). For this purpose, the concept of a
soft hyphen In computing and typesetting, a soft hyphen (ISO 8859: 0xAD, Unicode , HTML: ­ or ­ or ­) or syllable hyphen (EBCDIC: 0xCA), abbreviated SHY, is a code point reserved in some coded character sets for the purpose of breaki ...
(discretionary hyphen, optional hyphen) was introduced, allowing such manual specification of a place where a hyphenated break is ''allowed'' but not ''forced''. That is, it does not force a line break in an inconvenient place when the text is later reflowed. Soft hyphens are inserted into the text at the positions where hyphenation ''may'' occur. It can be a tedious task to insert the soft hyphens by hand, and tools using hyphenation algorithms are available that do this automatically. Current modules of the
Cascading Style Sheets Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone techno ...
(CSS) standard provide language-specific hyphenation dictionaries. Some (
OpenType OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark o ...
) fonts will change the character at the end of a word. An example is a font that places a
long s The long s , also known as the medial s or initial s, is an archaism, archaic form of the lowercase letter . It replaced the single ''s'', or one or both of the letters ''s'' in a 'double ''s sequence (e.g., "ſinfulneſs" for "sinfulness" ...
, 'ſ', everywhere ''except'' at the end of a word, where a round s, , is used. A soft hyphen can be used to change the previous letter to a round s in the middle of a word. For example, 'prinſeſſen' can be corrected by inserting a soft hyphen between the 'ſ's: 'prinſeſ-ſen' becomes 'prinſesſen' (which is correct in Norwegian). In contrast, a hyphen that is always displayed and printed is called a "hard hyphen". This can be a Unicode hyphen, a hyphen-minus, or a nonbreaking hyphen (see
below Below may refer to: *Earth *Ground (disambiguation) *Soil *Floor *Bottom (disambiguation) Bottom may refer to: Anatomy and sex * Bottom (BDSM), the partner in a BDSM who takes the passive, receiving, or obedient role, to that of the top or ...
). Confusingly, the term is sometimes limited to nonbreaking hyphens.


Nonbreaking hyphens

The non-breaking hyphen, nonbreaking hyphen, or no-break hyphen looks identical to the regular hyphen, but word processors treat it as a letter so that the hyphenated word will not be divided at the hyphen should this fall at what would be the end of a line of text; instead, either the whole hyphenated word will remain in full at the end of the line or it will go in full to the beginning of the next line. The nonbreaking space exists for similar reasons. The
word segmentation Text segmentation is the process of dividing written text into meaningful units, such as words, sentences, or topics. The term applies both to mental processes used by humans when reading text, and to artificial processes implemented in comput ...
rules of most text systems consider a hyphen to be a word boundary and a valid point at which to break a line when flowing text. However, this is not always desirable behavior, especially as it could lead to ambiguity (e.g. ''retreat'' and ''re‑treat'' would be indistinguishable with a line break after ''re''), it does not split off an ending as in "''n''th" (though ''n''th or "''n''th" could be used), and it is inappropriate in some languages other than English (e.g., a line break at the hyphen in
Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
or
Romanian Romanian may refer to: *anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania **Romanians, an ethnic group **Romanian language, a Romance language ***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language **Romanian cuisine, traditional ...
would be undesirable). The nonbreaking hyphen addresses this need.


"Unicode hyphen"

Because the conventional ''hyphen-minus'' mark on keyboards is ambiguous (it can be interpreted sometimes unexpectedly as a hyphen or a minus, depending on context), in addition the
Unicode consortium The Unicode Consortium (legally Unicode, Inc.) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization incorporated and based in Mountain View, California. Its primary purpose is to maintain and publish the Unicode Standard which was developed with the intenti ...
allocated
codepoint In character encoding terminology, a code point, codepoint or code position is a numerical value that maps to a specific character. Code points usually represent a single grapheme—usually a letter, digit, punctuation mark, or whitespace—but ...
s for an unambiguous minus and an unambiguous hyphen. The Unicode hyphen () is seldom used. Even the
Unicode Standard Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, whic ...
uses U+002D instead of U+2010 in its text.


Use in date notation

Use of hyphens to delineate the parts of a written date (rather than the slashes used conventionally in
Anglophone Speakers of English are also known as Anglophones, and the countries where English is natively spoken by the majority of the population are termed the ''Anglosphere''. Over two billion people speak English , making English the largest language ...
countries) is specified in the
international standard international standard is a technical standard developed by one or more international standards organizations. International standards are available for consideration and use worldwide. The most prominent such organization is the International Or ...
ISO 8601 ISO 8601 is an international standard covering the worldwide exchange and communication of date and time-related data. It is maintained by the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and was first published in 1988, wi ...
. Thus, for example, 1789-07-14 is the standard way of writing the date of
Bastille Day Bastille Day is the common name given in English-speaking countries to the national day of France, which is celebrated on 14 July each year. In French, it is formally called the (; "French National Celebration"); legally it is known as (; "t ...
. This standard has been transposed as European Standard EN 28601 and has been incorporated into various national typographic style guides (e.g.,
DIN DIN or Din or din may refer to: People and language * Din (name), people with the name * Dīn, an Arabic word with three general senses: judgment, custom, and religion from which the name originates * Dinka language (ISO 639 code: din), spoken by ...
5008 in Germany). Now all official European Union (and many member state) documents use this style. This is also the typical date format used in large parts of Europe and Asia, although sometimes with other separators than the hyphen. This method has gained influence within North America, as most common computer
file system In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one larg ...
s make the use of slashes in
file name A filename or file name is a name used to uniquely identify a computer file in a directory structure. Different file systems impose different restrictions on filename lengths. A filename may (depending on the file system) include: * name &ndas ...
s difficult or impossible.
DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicatio ...
,
OS/2 OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 ...
and
Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
use to introduce and separate switches to
shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses ** Thin-shell structure Science Biology * Seashell, a hard ou ...
commands, and on both Windows and
Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...
systems slashes in a filename introduce subdirectories which may not be desirable. Besides encouraging use of dashes, the Y-M-D order and zero-padding of numbers less than 10 are also copied from ISO 8601 to make the filenames sort by date order.


Unicode

Unicode has multiple hyphen characters: * , a character of multiple uses * * * * for medieval texts And in non-Latin scripts: * * * * (used only as a line-breaking hyphen) * (used in ancient Near-Eastern linguistics and in
blackletter Blackletter (sometimes black letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for the Danish, Norweg ...
typefaces) * (has the Unicode property of "Hyphen" despite its name) * (compatibility character for a small hyphen-minus, used in East Asian typography) * (compatibility character for a wide hyphen-minus, used in East Asian typography) * (compatibility character for a wide katakana middle dot, has the Unicode property of "Hyphen" despite its name) Unicode distinguishes the hyphen from the general
interpunct An interpunct , also known as an interpoint, middle dot, middot and centered dot or centred dot, is a punctuation mark consisting of a vertically centered dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin script. (Word-separating spaces did no ...
. The characters below do not have the Unicode property of "Hyphen" despite their names: * * * * * * * (See
interpunct An interpunct , also known as an interpoint, middle dot, middot and centered dot or centred dot, is a punctuation mark consisting of a vertically centered dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin script. (Word-separating spaces did no ...
and
bullet (typography) In typography, a bullet or bullet point, , is a typographical symbol or glyph used to introduce items in a list. For example: *Point 1 *Point 2 *Point 3 The bullet symbol may take any of a variety of shapes, such as circular, square, diamo ...
for more round characters.)


See also

*
Double hyphen In Latin script, the double hyphen is a punctuation mark that consists of two parallel hyphens. It was a development of the earlier , which developed from a Central European variant of the virgule slash, originally a form of scratch comma. Si ...
* French orthography § Hyphens * Hyphen War, dispute over the naming of Czechoslovakia after the 1989 split *
Papyrological hyphen The tie is a symbol in the shape of an arc (geometry), arc similar to a large breve, used in Greek language, Greek, phonetic alphabets, and Z notation. It can be used between two characters with spacing as punctuation, non-spacing as a diacritic, ...
: equivalent in pre-modern Greek *
Enhypen Enhypen (; ja, エンハイプン; ''Enhaipun''; stylized as ENHYPEN) is a South Korean boy band formed by Belift Lab, a joint venture between CJ ENM and Hybe Corporation, through the 2020 survival competition show ''I-Land''. The group is com ...
– South Korean boy band whose name derives from the hyphen symbol


Notes


References


External links

* Wiktionary list of English phrases spelled with a hyphen
Economist Style Guide—Hyphens


* Jukka Korpela

(See also his article o

) * Markus Kuhn, ttp://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/L2/03155r-kuhn-soft-hyphen.pdf Unicode interpretation of SOFT HYPHEN breaks ISO 8859-1 compatibility Unicode Technical Committee document L2/03-155R, June 2003.
United States Government Printing Office Style Manual 2000
6. Compounding Rules] {{navbox punctuation Punctuation Punctuation of English