Hyphens

In-Word Hyphenation

Meaning also matters when you are trying to decide whether to use a hyphen within a word. For example, if you didn't press your jeans properly and you need to re-press them, you would write that with a hyphen: I need to re-press my jeans. Otherwise, people might think you mean the verb repress meaning "to stifle or put down." You re-press jeans, but repress bad memories.

• You need to re-press your jeans.

• You need to repress those bad memories.

A dictionary is also helpful for figuring out less obvious cases of in-word hyphenation. Fortunately, there are at least a few solid rules. You use a hyphen when when you're joining a prefix to a word that must be capitalized and when joining a letter to a word. For example, you use a hyphen in

• Anti-American

• Un-American

• Pre-Mesozoic

• X-ray

• A-list

• T-shirt

Also, you use hyphens to write out numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine. For example

• Thirty-five

• Sixty-four

• Ninety-three

Hyphens are a complicated topic and I promise I'll do another show about other hyphen questions in the future.

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Hyphen image, kzys at Flickr. CC BY 2.0

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