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The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join and to separate of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation.
The hyphen is sometimes confused with (en dash , em dash and others), which are wider, or with the minus sign , which is also wider and usually drawn a little higher to match the crossbar in the plus sign .
As an Orthography concept, the hyphen is a single entity. In character encoding for use with computers, it is represented in Unicode by any of several characters. These include the dual-use hyphen-minus, the soft hyphen, the nonbreaking hyphen, and an unambiguous form known familiarly as the "Unicode hyphen", shown at the top of the infobox on this page. The character most often used to represent a hyphen (and the one produced by the key on a keyboard) is called the "hyphen-minus" in the Unicode specification because it is also used as a minus sign. The name derives from its name in the original ASCII standard, where it was called "hyphen(minus)".
This was necessary due to the ambiguity inherent in the lack of word spacing. In Greek these marks were known as enotikon, officially romanized as a hyphen.Ελληνικός Οργανισμός Τυποποίησης Ellīnikós. ΕΛΟΤ 743, 2η Έκδοση ELOT. ELOT (Athens), 2001.
With the introduction of word spacing in the Middle Ages, the hyphen, still written beneath the text, was used to connect two words that had been incorrectly separated by a space. With word spacing in play, a space is essentially the same function as an enotikon, rendering the enotikon unnecessary. This, plus the extra difficulty of using an enotikon in the closely-spaced lines of movable type, caused the greek-style hyphen to fall by the wayside.
The Middle Ages also saw the introduction of the , for words broken across lines, and also the compound-word hyphen, for forming hyphenated compounds. It is unclear, and a matter of scholarly debate, whether the compound-word hyphen came from the marginal hyphen or vice versa.
Johannes Gutenberg, in the publication of his famous 42-line Gutenberg Bible, heralding the age of movable type, used , "common to blackletter texts of the time", as the form of his hyphen. The Gutenberg Bible is noted for its perfect justification and regular spacing, which it achieves in part by hyphenating words without any additional rules that would constrain it from placing a hyphen anywhere in a word.
The use of the hyphen in English compound nouns and verbs has, in general, been steadily declining. Compounds that might once have been hyphenated are increasingly left with spaces or are combined into one word. Reflecting this changing usage, in 2007, the sixth edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary removed the hyphens from 16,000 entries, such as fig-leaf (now fig leaf), pot-belly (now pot belly), and pigeon-hole (now pigeonhole).. The increasing prevalence of computer technology and the advent of the Internet have given rise to a subset of common nouns that might have been hyphenated in the past (e.g., toolbar, hyperlink, and pastebin).
Despite decreased use, hyphenation remains the norm in certain compound-modifier constructions and, among some authors, with certain prefixes (see below). Hyphenation is also routinely used as part of syllabification in justified texts to avoid unsightly spacing (especially in columns with narrow , as when used with newspapers).
| Justified text without hyphenation | Justified text with hyphenation | |
| We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America ...| style=width:3em; | We, therefore, the tatives of the United States of America ... |
Rules (or guidelines) for correct hyphenation vary between languages, and may be complex, and they can interact with other Orthography and typesetting practices. Hyphenation algorithms, when employed in concert with dictionaries, are sufficient for all but the most formal texts.
It may be necessary to distinguish an incidental line-break hyphen from one integral to a word being mentioned (as when used in a dictionary) or present in an original text being quoted (when in a critical edition), not only to control its word wrap behavior (which encoding handles with hard and soft hyphens having the same glyph) but also to differentiate appearance (with a different glyph). Webster's Third New International Dictionary and the Chambers Dictionary use a double hyphen for integral hyphens and a single hyphen for line-breaks, whereas Kromhout's Afrikaans–English dictionary uses the opposite convention. The Concise Oxford Dictionary (fifth edition) suggested repeating an integral hyphen at the start of the following line.
The hyphen may be used between vowel letters (e.g., ee, ea, ei) to indicate that they do not form a digraph. Some words have both hyphenated and unhyphenated variants: /deescalate, /cooperation, /reexamine, /deemphasize, and so on. Words often lose their hyphen as they become more common, such as email instead of . When there are tripled letters, the hyphenated variant of these words is often more common (as in instead of ).
Closed-up style is avoided in some cases: possible , such as recreation (fun or sport) versus (the act of creating again), retreat (turn back) versus (give therapy again), and (not in ion form) versus unionized (organized into trade unions); combinations with proper noun nouns or adjectives (, );.. (, ); or numbers (, ). Although is still hyphenated by both Dorland's and Merriam-Webster's Medical, the solid (that is, unhyphenated) styling ( protooncogene) is a common variant, particularly among oncologists and geneticists.
A diaeresis may also be used in a like fashion, either to separate and mark off monographs (as in coöperation) or to signalize a vowel terminal e (for example, Brontë). This use of the diaeresis peaked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but it was never applied extensively across the language: only a handful of diaereses, including coöperation and Brontë, are encountered with any appreciable frequency in English; thus reëxamine, reïterate, deëmphasize, etc. are seldom encountered. In borrowings from Modern French, whose orthography utilizes the diaeresis as a means to differentiate , various English dictionaries list the dieresis as optional (as in naive and naïve) despite the juxtaposition of a and i.
Similarly, hyphens may be used to indicate the spelling of a word, as in W-O-R-D to represent word.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries hyphens were also sometimes used to divide syllables in words from indigenous North American languages being transcribed into the Latin script, such as "Shuh-shuh-gah" (from Ojibwe language zhashagi, "blue heron") in The Song of Hiawatha. Other styles of transcription, in use before and after this one, did not use hyphens this way. As the hyphenation is "usually syllable-by-syllable but sometimes not", it is difficult to ascertain if this was intended to communicate morpheme information or "some perceived difference in prosody". John Wesley Powell's Introduction to the Study of Indian Languages from 1880 explicitly instructs this method of transcription for the documentation of American Indian languages: "Syllables should be separated by hyphens. In connected texts hyphens should be omitted." This somewhat archaic hyphenation style can still be found preserved in some contemporary place names such as that of Ah-gwah-ching, Minnesota.
When a compound modifier follows the term to which it applies, a hyphen is typically not used if the compound is a temporary compound. For example, "that gentleman is well respected", not "that gentleman is well-respected"; or "a patient-centered approach was used" but "the approach was patient centered." But permanent compounds, found as headwords in dictionaries, are treated as invariable, so if they are hyphenated in the cited dictionary, the hyphenation will be used in both attributive and predicative positions. For example, "A cost-effective method was used" and "The method was cost-effective" ( cost-effective is a permanent compound that is hyphenated as a headword in various dictionaries). When one of the parts of the modifier is a proper noun or a proper adjective, there is no hyphen (e.g., "a South American actor").
When the first modifier in a compound is an adverb ending in -ly (e.g., "a poorly written novel"), various style guides advise no hyphen. However, some do allow for this use. For example, The Economist Style Guide advises: "Adverbs do not need to be linked to participles or adjectives by hyphens in simple constructions... Less common adverbs, including all those that end -ly, are less likely to need hyphens." In the 19th century, it was common to hyphenate adverb–adjective modifiers with the adverb ending in -ly (e.g., "a craftily-constructed chair"). However, this has become rare. For example, wholly owned subsidiary and quickly moving vehicle are unambiguous, because the adverbs clearly modify the adjectives: "quickly" cannot modify "vehicle".
However, if an adverb can also function as an adjective, then a hyphen may be or should be used for clarity, depending on the style guide. For example, the phrase reasons ("reasons that are more important") is distinguished from more important reasons ("additional important reasons"), where more is an adjective. Similarly, scenery (with a mass noun) is distinct from more beautiful scenery. (In contrast, the hyphen in "a reason" is not necessary, because the syntax cannot be misinterpreted.) A few short and common words—such as well, ill, little, and much—attract special attention in this category. The hyphen in "well-past_participled noun", such as in "well-differentiated cells", might reasonably be judged superfluous (the syntax is unlikely to be misinterpreted), yet plenty of style guides call for it. Because early has both adverbial and adjectival senses, its hyphenation can attract attention; some editors, due to comparison with advanced-stage disease and adult-onset disease, like the parallelism of early-stage disease and early-onset disease. Similarly, the hyphen in little-celebrated paintings clarifies that one is not speaking of little paintings.
Hyphens are usually used to connect numbers and words in modifying phrases. Such is the case when used to describe dimensional measurements of weight, size, and time, under the rationale that, like other compound modifiers, they take hyphens in attributive position (before the modified noun), although not in predicative position (after the modified noun). This is applied whether numerals or words are used for the numbers. Thus woman and woman or wingspan and wingspan, but the woman is 28 years old and a wingspan of 32 feet. However, with symbols for SI units (such as metre or kilogram)—in contrast to the names of these units (such as metre or kilogram)—the numerical value is always separated from it with a space: a 25 kg sphere. When the unit names are spelled out, this recommendation does not apply: a sphere, a roll of film.Bureau international des poids et mesures, Le Système international d'unités (SI) / The International System of Units (SI), 9th ed. (Sèvres: 2019), , sub§5.4.3, p. 149; "Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI)", NIST Special Publication 811, National Institute of Standards and Technology, March 2008.
In spelled-out fractions, hyphens are usually used when the fraction is used as an adjective but not when it is used as a noun: thus majority and portion but I drank two thirds of the bottle or I kept three quarters of it for myself. However, at least one major style guide hyphenates spelled-out fractions invariably (whether adjective or noun).
In English, an en dash, , sometimes replaces the hyphen in hyphenated compounds if either of its constituent parts is already hyphenated or contains a space (for example, San Francisco–area residents, hormone receptor–positive cells, cell cycle–related factors, and public-school–private-school rivalries). A commonly used alternative style is the hyphenated string ( hormone-receptor-positive cells, cell-cycle-related factors). (For other aspects of en dash–versus–hyphen use, see Dash § En dash.)
An example of an ambiguous phrase appears in they stood near a group of alien lovers, which without a hyphen implies that they stood near a group of lovers who were aliens; they stood near a group of alien-lovers clarifies that they stood near a group of people who loved aliens, as "alien" can be either an adjective or a noun. On the other hand, in the phrase a hungry pizza-lover, the hyphen will often be omitted (a hungry pizza lover), as "pizza" cannot be an adjective and the phrase is therefore unambiguous.
Similarly, a man-eating shark is nearly the opposite of a man eating shark; the first refers to a shark that eats people, and the second to a man who eats shark meat. A government-monitoring program is a program that monitors the government, whereas a government monitoring program is a government program that monitors something else.
With already-hyphenated names, some parts are typically dropped. For example, Aaron Johnson and Samantha Taylor-Wood became Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Sam Taylor-Johnson. Not all hyphenated surnames are the result of marriage. For example Julia Louis-Dreyfus is a descendant of Louis Lemlé Dreyfus whose son was Léopold Louis-Dreyfus.
Hyphens are often used in romanization of Korean names, such as Ban Ki-moon and Cho Jung-ho.
It can also be used to indicate a range of values, although many styles prefer an en dash (see ).
It is sometimes used to hide letters in words (filleting for redaction or censoring), as in "G-d", although an en dash can be used as well ("G–d").
It is often used in reduplication.
Due to their similar appearances, hyphens are sometimes mistakenly used where an en dash or em dash would be more appropriate.
The hyphen-minus has limited use in indicating subtraction; for example, compare (minus) and (hyphen-minus) — in most typefaces, the glyph for hyphen-minus will not have the optimal width, thickness, or vertical position, whereas the minus character is typically designed so that it does. Nevertheless, in many spreadsheet and programming applications the hyphen-minus must be typed to indicate subtraction, as use of the Unicode minus sign will not be recognised.
The hyphen-minus is often used instead of dashes or minus signs in situations where the latter characters are unavailable (such as type writer or ASCII-only text), where they take effort to enter (via or multi-key keyboard shortcuts), or when the writer is unaware of the distinction. Consequently, some writers use two or three hyphen-minuses ( or ) to represent an em dash. In the TeX typesetting languages, a single hyphen-minus (-) renders a hyphen, a single hyphen-minus in math mode ($-$) renders a minus sign, two hyphen-minuses (--) renders an en dash, and three hyphen-minuses (---) renders an em dash.
The hyphen-minus character is also often used when specifying command-line options. The character is usually followed by one or more letters that indicate specific actions. Typically it is called a dash or switch in this context. Various implementations of the getopt function to parse command-line options additionally allow the use of two hyphen-minus characters, , to specify long option names that are more descriptive than their single-letter equivalents. Another use of hyphens is that employed by programs written with pipelining in mind: a single hyphen may be recognized of a filename, with the hyphen then serving as an indicator that a standard streams, instead of a file, is to be worked with.
Soft hyphens are inserted into the text at the positions where hyphenation may occur. It can be a tedious task to insert the soft hyphens by hand, and tools using hyphenation algorithms are available that do this automatically. Current modules of the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) standard provide language-specific hyphenation dictionaries.
In contrast, a hyphen that is always displayed and printed is called a "hard hyphen". This can be a Unicode hyphen, a hyphen-minus, or a nonbreaking hyphen (see below). Confusingly, the term is sometimes limited to nonbreaking hyphens.
This method has gained influence within North America, as most common computer make the use of slashes in difficult or impossible. MS-DOS, OS/2 and Windows use to introduce and separate switches to shell commands, and on both Windows and Unix-like systems slashes in a filename introduce subdirectories which may not be desirable. Besides encouraging use of dashes, the Y-M-D order and zero-padding of numbers less than 10 are also copied from ISO 8601 to make the filenames sort by date order.
Unicode distinguishes the hyphen from the general interpunct. The characters below do not have the Unicode property of "Hyphen" despite their names:
(See interpunct and bullet (typography) for more round characters.)
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