The hyphen is a handy punctuation mark that lets us link words (and sometimes divide them). When it comes to joining words using hyphens, it’s not always clear when a hyphen is needed, and I often see them being added unnecessarily. Here are a few quick points about when to use this punctuation mark.
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Hyphens are most often used to form compound words in English, though the trend is increasingly toward removing them altogether and closing up the words. Think multi-level vs. multilevel or re-assign vs. reassign. There are exceptions to this trend, especially if the hyphen helps the word read correctly, so if you’re unsure, you can check your preferred dictionary to see if it closes up the word instead of using the hyphen.
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Hyphens can also be used to connect words that are modifying another word to make it clear which part is doing the modifying. For example, you’d react differently to a man eating chicken than you would to a man-eating chicken.
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Keep in mind that some words that would be hyphenated when modifying (coming before) a word, should NOT be hyphenated if used in other ways, as in the following examples.
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Example: Use the drag-and-drop method to move the files. In this sentence, drag-and-drop is modifying method, so it takes the hyphens.
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Example: You can drag and drop the files into the folder. In this sentence, drag and drop are verbs and, as the action in the sentence, are not modifying anything, so no hyphens are needed.
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Hyphens can be used to turn phrasal verbs into nouns. For example, check in the files (verb, no hyphen) vs. complete the check-in (noun, takes a hyphen).
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Hyphens can be used to indicate that items in a list have a common element. For example, in Use the X-, Y-, and Z-axis., the hyphen is taking the place of “axis” for each entry (X-axis, Y-axis, and Z-axis).
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Finally, hyphens can be used to divide a word at the end of a line. Where to break the word depends on each situation, but generally breaking between syllables is best practice. Hint: Some dictionaries will provide the syllable breakdown (such as com·put·er), so you can check there if you’re unsure where the best spot to break is.
I hope these quick points have been helpful for you!
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