SMM Hyphens

The general principle is to avoid hyphens where possible, as they clutter up text. Modern trends are towards combining words. New concepts or inventions often start as two words or hyphenated, and gradually grow together, hence email, chatroom, multifaith, shortlist.

 There is no need to use hyphens with compound adjectives where the meaning is clear with no potential for ambiguity: oil price rise, health sector reform, civil service pay.

 Hyphens are needed for short compound adjectives, mainly because of their potential for ambiguity: a little-used car (not a small, old one), two-year-old babies (babies who are two, not two babies who are one), the man-eating shark (not the fellow enjoying exotic seafood).

 Hyphenate short, common compound adjectives only if used before a noun: ‘a well-established procedure’, but ‘the procedure is well established’; an ‘ill-timed comment’, but ‘the comment was ill timed’.

 Do not use a hyphen with adverbs ending –ly: ‘a totally incorrect statement’, ‘a hotly disputed result’.

 Use for fractions (whether nouns or adjectives): two-thirds, four-fifths, one-sixth.

 Compass quarters can be used without hyphens: the northeast, southwest Nigeria, but north-northwest (see also capitalisation).

 The only titles that are commonly hyphenated nowadays are those with ‘vice’, vice-president, vice-chairman, and even this is going out of fashion, so we will plump for no hyphens: vice president, deputy chairman, brigadier general, under secretary. But note, ‘the vice-presidential candidate’, as vice-presidential is a compound adjective.

 Do not normally use hyphens with common terms using a prefix: reapply, postmodern, overeducated, nonproliferation, preoccupied.

 But use them to avoid the same letter jammed together with an odd appearance: re-election not reelection, pre-eminent not preeminent.

Exceptions include overreach, override, overrule, skiing, underrate, withhold.

 Many constructions with anti, counter, half, inter, non and semi need hyphens, especially if they are longer or less common: semi-literate but semitone, anti-religion but antisocial, counter-terrorism but counterpart. Check a dictionary if unsure.