The Hyphen reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Hyphen

Punctuation marks

; apostrophe ('), (’) ; brackets ((, )), ([, ]), ({, }), (〈, 〉) ; colon (:) ; comma (,) ; dash (‒), (–), (—), (―) ; ellipsis (...) ; exclamation marks (!, ¡) ; full stop (.) ; hyphen (-), (‐) ; interpunct (·) ; interrobang (‽) ; question marks (?, ¿) ; quotation marks ('), (‘, ’), ('), (“,”), ;     (‹, ›), («, »), (‚, ‘), („, “) ; semicolon (;) ; slash (/) ; space ( )

A hyphen 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. Hyphenation is the use of hyphens.

In computer programming notation, the hyphen corresponds to Unicode and ASCII character 45, or U+002D (see hexadecimal). Note that this is actually the hyphen-minus character, which is historically also used to display dashes or represent the minus sign. A character which can only and unambigiously represent a hyphen also exists in Unicode at position 8208, or U+2010. In your user agent it displays as follows: ‐

Rules and customs of usage

Traditionally, the hypen has been used in several ways:

• Nouns formed of two nouns, or a noun and an adjective, are sometimes hyphenated, as death-wish. (See also Hyphenated American.)

• Except for noun-noun and adverb-adjective compound modifiers, when a compound modifier appears before a term, the compound modifier is generally hyphenated in order to prevent any possible misunderstanding, such as light-blue paint, twentieth-century invention, cold-hearted person, and award-winning show. Without the hyphens, there is potential confusion about whether "light" applies to "blue" or "paint", whether "twentieth" applies to "century" or "invention", etc. Hyphens are generally not used in noun-noun or adverb-adjective compound modifiers, for example:
  • government standards organization and department store manager
  • truly remarkable progress

• Names of numbers less than one hundred are hyphenated. For instance, the number 123 should be written one hundred [and] twenty-three. (The and is generally included in British English but omitted in American English.)

• Hyphens are also used to denote syllabification, as in syl-lab-i-fi-ca-tion.

• If a word beginning on one line of text continues into the following line, a hyphen will usually be inserted immediately before the split.

• Some married women non-traditionally compose their surnames by appending their husbands' surnames to their maiden names using a hyphen.

However, the use of hyphens has in general been steadily declining, both in popular writing and in scholarly journals. Its use is almost always avoided by those who write advertising copy or labels on packaging, since they are often more concerned with visual cleanliness than semantic clarity. However, it is still used in most newspapers and magazines, so people remain accustomed to seeing and understanding it. Most writers who are obstreperous about other things are compliant when editors tell them to hyphenate compounds.

Examples of usage

Some strong examples of semantic changes caused by the placement of hyphens:

• Disease causing poor nutrition, meaning that a disease causes poor nutrition, and
• Disease-causing poor nutrition, meaning that poor nutrition causes disease

• Man-eating shark, meaning a dangerous animal, and
• Man eating shark, which reverses the relationship between the two

• New age-discrimination rules, meaning new rules regarding discrimination according to age, and
• New-age discrimination rules, meaning rules regarding discrimination (not necessarily according to age) consistent with the New Age movement

Additional examples of proper use:

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

Detroit-based organization or ... organization is Detroit-based

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

board-certified strategy or ... strategy is board-certified

thought-provoking argument or ... argument is thought-provoking

time-sensitive error or ... error is time-sensitive

case-sensitive password or ... password is case-sensitive

government-issued photo ID or ... photo ID is government-issued (but ... is issued by the government with no hyphen.)

light-gathering surface or ... surface is light-gathering

award-winning novel or ... novel is award-winning (but, more likely, ... won an award with no hyphen)

web-based encyclopedia or ... encyclopedia is web-based

fun-loving person or ... person is fun-loving

how to wire-transfer funds

how to tax-plan

advertising-supported service or ... service is advertising-supported (but, better, ... is supported by advertising with no hyphen.)

Rudolph Giuliani is an Italian-American (but see Hyphenated American)

list of China-related topics or ...list of topics is China-related (but ... related to China with no hyphen)

Out-of-body experience

Near-death experience

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