I received a question today about compound words. When do you hyphenate? Or do you?
Language evolves, and hyphenated words are no exception. We used to use make-up, now it’s makeup. Oversensitive, outmaneuver, and underachiever began their lives as separate or hyphenated words. Hyphens are used to clarify, particularly modifiers. For instance in the sentence: His beet red face betrayed his embarrassment is acceptable, but His beet-red face betrayed his embarrassment is clearer because beet modifies red not face. Beet-red is a compound adjective. Beetred isn’t a word.
Fortunately, we have Spellcheck® to alert us to words that are not yet accepted without a hyphen. Unfortunately, its database isn’t perfect.
Take the case of e-mail. The e in e-mail is short for electronic. Same with e-book or e-commerce or e-anything. If you eliminate the hyphen, you have incorrectly formatted the technological compound word. Alas, it’s a losing battle. AOL, Yahoo!, and the computer world insists on ignoring the rule and creating new words: email, ebook, etc. I encourage you to take up the good fight, however, and continue to hyphenate e-mail in your writing.
When do you avoid the hyphen? Never use a hyphen in a combined modifier that includes an adverb: overly dressed, excessively jealous, very dark.
Hyphenated words are disappearing from usage, though. Look for more and more pairs of words to evolve into new single words, like multitasking. It wasn’t long ago, I multi-tasked. Oh, well, such is progress.
I never came across on any article on hyphen.. Well I must say its a well written article…
It is difficult online to know when to use the proper grammar and when to avoid it. With the amount of competition on the web you want to get noticed and sometimes you have to jeopardise you’re knowledge of grammar to appear for searches so you can be found.
One question you may be able to answer, the word web site, is it web site or website?
Jenny,
It should be Web site, two words and with a capital W. Internet should be capitalized, too. E-mail should be hyphenated. Unfortunately, you’ll see misused and misspelled words all over, not just the Internet.
Thank you for clarifying this for me. It’s something I have been pondering for a while now. It is easy to rely on software to pick up grammar and spelling mistakes but they don’t always and ‘Web site’ is one of these examples. Thank you Cheryl.
Why should we “take up the good fight” for the hyphen in e-mail, if the battle is lost? I’m not even certain the cause is just. While email (or e-mail) means electronic mail, it is not a compound word. It is a contraction. One could make a case for e’mail, I suppose. (Nobody does, of course.) Perhaps the “e-” construction faded because it was not, strictly speaking, standard.
William Safire once argued in favor of hyphenated e-mail, but he too predicted that hyphen’s demise. That was at least a decade ago. I agreed with Safire at the time, but came quickly to realize that the world had settled on the shorter word form, and that the world was correct in doing so. And I don’t miss that hyphen, any more than I miss those of to-morrow or to-day. When it comes to email, the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces, hyphen-wise.
Wonderful goods from you, man. I’ve understand your stuff previous to and you are just too excellent. I actually like what you have acquired here, really like what you are stating and the way in which you say it. You make it enjoyable and you still care for to keep it smart. I can’t wait to read far more from you. This is really a wonderful site.
I have a question. If we concede that the use of “website” is an error, would you call it an error of spelling, or of usage, or of formatting?
Jess, it’s a spelling issue. But the AP has ruled that website is correct, so don’t lose any sleep over this one.
Hello there Kristel Bourgois here, I have been simply looking for info about To hyphenate or not … that is the question The Grammar Cop on the internet. So happy to have found http://cherylnorman.com/blog/2009/02/07/to-hyphenate-or-not-that-is-the-question to know about this info. Saved me lots of hours, thanks!.