Hot answers tagged hyphen
68
Both e-mail and email are in standard use at this point, although e-mail retains a vast majority of usage in edited, published writing according to my research using the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA).
Here are the current results counts in COCA for various categories of English:
e-mail email
spoken 3535 711
fiction ...
54
An em-dash is typically used to act as a comma or parenthesis to separate out phrases—or even just a word—in a sentence for various reasons (i.e. an appositive). Examples where an em-dash should be used:
School is based on the three R’s—reading, writing, and ’rithemtic.
Against all odds, Pete—the unluckiest man alive—won the ...
46
Both are correct and common. I'd recommend the shorter and simpler email.
There seems to be a tendency to drop hyphen as a newly coined word becomes more and more commonplace:
electronic mail → e-mail → email
That is what I've read earlier somewhere, and looking around I now found at least this quote by Donald Knuth to support the claim:
Newly ...
36
In English, there are three types of compound words:
the closed form, in which the words are melded together, such as firefly, secondhand, softball, childlike, crosstown, redhead, keyboard, makeup, notebook;
the hyphenated form, such as daughter-in-law, master-at-arms, over-the-counter, six-pack, six-year-old, mass-produced;
and the open form, ...
28
Obligatory ngram:
27
The correct spelling in this case is username.
The username is the (usually unique) thing you type in with your password, for example: bobsmith66.
The user name is the name of the user, the user's real life name, for example: Bob Smith. User name is sometimes used for username, but occasionally it makes a difference, so be clear and avoid the ambiguity. ...
21
Hyphen and dash are at least three distinct characters, and the hyphen is the shortest.
Hyphens “-” are primarily used in compound words (a 20-year-old co-ed) and when a word is broken at the end of a line (which explains why word breaking is called hyphenation). Hyphens are always very short, narrower than most letters. There is never a space between the ...
15
Within the nomenclature of this site, upvote seems to be the accepted term.
Otherwise, you could go for up-vote or vote up but not up vote.
Upvote and the hyphenated up-vote work because they are compounds and create a new verb. Though the resulting word is not in a dictionary, it works because it follows logical/existing morphology patterns, whereby the ...
15
The Chicago Manual of Style advises:
When the second part of a hyphenated expression is omitted, the hyphen is retained, followed by a word space.
The hanging hyphen sets the reader up to expect a series of hyphenated expressions, all of which have the same second part. If you omit the hanging hyphen, therefore, it's not clear that the series has begun ...
14
It's (usually) intended as a form of light sarcasm or irony.
James P is saying that technically, if you take the official definition of a depression, squint hard and don't look too closely, you can say with a straight face that 2012 is not a depression year; however, everyone knows that regardless of what the official figures may say, 2012 really is a ...
13
I generally use "email".
I think people who work with technology use "email" and people who write about it use "e-mail" (though this isn't a standard).
Google, Yahoo and Apple use "email".
USAToday, CNN and the New York Times use "e-mail".
According to wikipedia:
There are several spelling variations that occasionally prove cause for surprisingly vehement ...
13
Hyphens are used to connect words when it's unclear which words are modifying which other words. Connecting the two words that modify each other with a hyphen can make a big difference in the meaning of a sentence.
Compare these different ways of using a hyphen with the same words: A "big-time traveller" is someone who travels a lot. A "big time-traveller" ...
13
I would call them hyphenated compounds, as opposed to solid compounds and open compounds. Note how they are not dashed. That's because a hyphen (-) is not the same as a dash (–, —, ⁓, ‒).
Short compounds may be written in three different ways, which do not correspond to different pronunciations, however:
The "solid" or "closed" forms in which two ...
13
According to Nick Marten's The Secret History of Typography in the Oxford English Dictionary, a colon followed by a dash is a typographical mark that the OED refers to as the dog's bollocks:
Citing usage from 1949, the OED calls this mark the dog’s bollocks, which it defines as, “typogr. a colon followed by a dash, regarded as forming a shape resembling ...
12
Asking for something that is both concise and comprehensive is, unfortunately, contradictory. The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th Edition devotes one full page (5 numbered sections, 6.38-42) to "general principles" of hyphenating compound words, but then also goes on to list a 13-page table of common forms, when to hyphenate them, when not to, and when to ...
11
In a situation where you're using the phrase on time as an adjective (basically a synonym of punctual) preceding the noun, then it's fairly common to use a hyphen. Examples I was able to quickly pull up were things like
On-time delivery is our goal.
On-time flight departures were up 10%.
On-time performance is an important ingredient
...
11
As an addendum to Monica's fine answer, I'd like to add that there is a third possibility: fusing "non" with the word it precedes. A typical example would be "nonrelativistic", which seems to be Merriam-Webster's choice.
Similarly, one reads nonnegative, nonmagnetic, nonferrous, etc.
10
The New Oxford American Dictionary reports that the word is e-mail, but also email.
Wiktionary has a voice for e-mail where it's reported email as alternative spelling, and the following note:
The spellings e-mail and email are both in common use. The use of email is now more widespread, likely due to one less character and thus making it easier to ...
10
That link Vikas gave was dead for me, so I'll explain it in short. Whenever an adjective consists of more than one word, and comes before the noun it belongs to, it should get a hyphen. This is done to make it easier for the reader. In your example, without the hyphen, it would be an act play, and just one such play—which doesn't make sense—instead of a play ...
10
I do what you suggest and as logic dictates: hyphenate when used adjectivally. So, “he gave two thirds of his fortune to me“, but “our two-thirds majority on the board ensures a satisfying outcome”.
More to the point, the New Oxford American Dictionary concurs on avoiding the hyphen when used as a noun: “one half of a circle”, “a third of a mile”, etc.
10
The term in question is phrasal verb which is defined as
a phrase which consists of a verb in combination with a preposition or adverb or both, the meaning of which is different from the meaning of its separate parts. Cambridge
When changing the tense of a phrasal verb, only the verb is affected, for the simple reason that adverbs and prepositions do ...
10
In ‘The Penguin Guide to Punctuation’, R L Trask identifies three cases in which a hyphen is required after a prefix. One of them is where a prefix is added to a word which already contains a hyphen. His examples are non-bribe-taking politicians, his pre-globe-trotting days, non-stress-timed languages and an un-re-elected politician.
In your example, ...
10
Looking through Google Books, it appears that a few authors do use open-source as a verb. Some of them use it within quotes, while others use a hyphen-less one word variant. It has also made its way into Wiktionary, but, just to make things difficult, is accompanied by an alternative form. I think it might be OK to use open-source as a verb and depending on ...
10
When you use a quantity and a unit as an adjective, the unit is singular:
A 200-pound man...
A 280-calorie snack...
When the unit is used as a noun, it's plural (unless the quantity is one, of course):
200 pounds of man crashed down on me...
I enjoyed those 280 calories...
10
Using the hyphen would traditionally be appropriate there, though it strikes me as old-fashioned. The BBC's website, for example, regularly uses "postmen and women" without a hyphen. Of course, this is somewhat ambiguous, as it could be taken to mean the same as "thousands of women and postmen". Context usually shows what is meant, but the hyphen certainly ...
9
You're looking at a compound compound modifier.
Generally, a compound modifier (a two-word phrase that is used as an adjective) is hyphenated when it appears before the noun it is modifying:
The brick-oven pizza was cooked in a brick oven.
Love is a two-way street.
The hyphen is there to prevent confusion on which words are being modified. There may be ...
9
This is a very good question and is one that troubled me for a long time.
Here is what the Fowler brothers say in their Kings English:
TEXT 1: Within the last ten days two Anglo-South Americans have been in my office arranging for passages to New Zealand.—Times.
SUGGESTION 1: Anglo-South-Americans is the best that can be done. What is really wanted ...
9
“Computer related” is a compound adjective and whether or not you should use a hyphen depends on where it is located in the sentence. If it appears before the word it modifies, include a hyphen. If after, omit the hyphen. This is mostly a clarification of Ex-user's answer. To use his/her examples, the following are both correct:
This book is computer ...
9
I recommend the following two articles:
Hyphenated Compound Words
Hyphenated Compounds: When and Why?
Unfortunately, the news in those articles isn't good. The distinction between hyphenated and non-hyphenated compounds is largely driven by convention, and while there are some rules of thumb, you have to be prepared for numerous exceptions and arbitrary ...
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