Hyphens are only used to combine certain words together. They are not strong enough to set off phrases or words from a sentence. Use hyphens in the following situations: Use in compound numbers and ...

Call me crazy. I'm dog-sitting this weekend, and we already have three dogs of our own. The visiting dog is a 1-year-old miniature beagle, and our beagle mix thinks he's a long-lost brother. They race ...

Recently, I wrote about some changes to the AP Stylebook’s rules on hyphens. Specifically, I reported that AP is going lighter on them, arguing that if a hyphen doesn’t do anything to make a compound ...

Sign up for the daily CJR newsletter. During the recent gathering of the American Copy Editors Society, a lot of “hyphen” jokes made the rounds. One was “Why we ...

People get hyped about hyphens. Hyphens are tricky creatures that can't be summed up in a few words. They are sometimes overused, other times underused. They follow a few rules then haphazardly ignore ...

Language has rules. For people who aren’t too confident in their writing and grammar skills, the rules can be very useful, helping determine things like which verb form to use and where to put a ...

Hyphenation may be the most egalitarian approach to surnames, yet like so many other trends popularized in the ’70s and ’80s, it hasn’t aged well. As women saddled with hyphenates face their own ...