Some key rules for hyphenating
Dear editors,
For our second-ever theme week, we talked about hyphenation, a topic that preoccupies copy editors everywhere. In summary, here are a few ground rules for hyphenation that will help you make informed decisions about where to deploy that little “-” we all love and respect.
Hyphens are joiners. Use them to avoid ambiguity or to form a single idea from two or more words. Use of the hyphen is a matter of taste, judgment, and style sense, but we have some guidelines to live by.
1. Hyphenate compound modifiers before a noun.
When two or more words form an adjective before a noun, you should usually hyphenate them. A few examples of this rule in action:
A turn-of-the-century house
A brand-new restaurant
A suspicious-looking person
A 19th-century novel
A head-to-toe look
2. But when they do not appear just before a noun, those modifiers generally don’t need hyphens.
The house was built around the turn of the century
The restaurant is brand new
She was dressed in purple from head to toe
3. There are some exceptions to this rule.
Adverbs ending in “ly” should not be hyphenated:
A newly built skyscraper
A brightly lit room
And because hyphens are a matter of taste and style, you can leave them out when they’re clunky or unnecessary — check in with me if you’re not sure:
A New York City-based chef, not A New-York-City-based chef
4. Some words are just hyphenated.
Some words always contain a hyphen. Check on our word list, at Merriam-Webster, or with me to determine whether or not your word needs a hyphen. A few examples of words that contain hyphens:
high-rise
croque-monsieur
A-frame
drive-thru
As always, let me know if you have lingering questions about the hyphens in your life. I encourage you to scroll back a couple weeks in our #curbed-copy-edit and #eater-copy-edit Slack rooms if you missed out on the challenges, because our editors raised some really good questions.
Copy News
New to our word lists: #MeToo, cheesemaker, caprese salad, smoky (not smokey), Corinthian, councilmember (lowercase except before a name: Councilmember Paul Koretz).
Reminder: In restaurant names, please lowercase the word “the” regardless of the restaurant’s style: the Grill, the Spotted Pig.
Journalists love Microsoft Word. The city of San Francisco is giving money to bookstores. And the New York Times drops courtesy titles, like Mrs. and Mr., in some stories.
Have a great weekend!
Emma