Blog: Jeneca Jones

I am approached by co-workers who pose this question often: “Hyphen or no hyphen?”

“Well, it depends,” is normally my response. “How is it used in the sentence?”

My standard reply comes straight from the punctuation chapter of the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook, which was hammered into my head by a hard-nosed editor I worked for at a small, community newspaper.

So here it goes…

“Hyphens are joiners. Use them to avoid ambiguity or to form a single idea from two or more words. Use of the hyphen is far more standardized. It is optional in most cases, a matter of taste, judgment and style sense. But the fewer the hyphens the better; use them only when not using them causes confusion.”

Here’s an example we encountered today. Which is correct?

A: “This vegetable-and-seafood pasta dish makes an excellent entrée.”

OR

B: “This vegetable and seafood pasta dish makes an excellent entrée.”

We decided against the hyphens. Without them, there is no confusion. The following, sentence, however, would be clunky without them.

“This sweet-meets-spicy salad is bursting with flavor.”

Do you agree?

Here are a few more examples:

Well: Hyphenate as part of a compound modifier: She is a well-dressed woman.

In: No hyphen when it means not: inaccurate, insufferable, inbound, indoor, inpatient. A few ‘in” combinations do take a hyphen, however: in-depth, in-house, in-law.

If you go to the online AP Stylebook, you’ll come up with 173 hits for hyphens, addressing everything from “best-seller” to “offseason.”

For anyone who tends to see things in black and white, however, hyphens can be formidable nemeses. There are many things to consider: Is it a compound modifier, adjective, noun, prefix, numerical figure? It’s enough to make even seasoned writers curl up in a ball and rock themselves.

Know this: When it comes to hyphens, Google is not your friend. Why? Because much of the English-speaking population struggles with hyphens, too.

To be certain, check your AP Stylebook, or Webster's New World College Dictionary. (Be warned, however, that there are many exceptions to Webster’s found in the AP Stylebook, also known as the “journalist’s bible.”

The best advice I can give you is this: trust your gut and be consistent.

Happy Hyphenating!