I see many words that should be hyphenated spelled as one word, the most common is e-mail. Here’s a rule to remember without exception: When the word is formed with a single as the first syllable, hyphenate or open. Q-tip, V neck, U-turn, e-publishing, X-ray, A-line, G-string, D day.
I also see hyphens that aren’t needed. Commonly mishyphenated words include: ongoing, under way, a priori (or any Latin phrase), bona fide, vice versa, and ad hoc.
Avoid using a hyphen with an -ly adverb: widely known, thinly coated, readily available.
Rules are fine, but most of the time you can use common sense. For instance, if the reader will stumble over a word because of a missing hyphen, it’s wise to add one: Do-able, co-worker, pre-wedding, city-wide. Another situation arises when the compound word repeats letters, creating an awkward spelling: anti-inflammatory, re-emphasize, multi-item, shell-like. You don’t want to jar your reader from your story with funny looking words like antiinflammatory, reemphasize, multiitem, shelllike, right?
It’s a good idea to hyphenate when the root word is capitalized or a numeral: pre-Columbian, Buddha-like, un-American, pre-1900s, post-1950s. Likewise, hyphenate numbers that are spelled out or are stated as fractions: twenty-one, sixty-seven, one-fourth, but not two-word numbers combined with a fraction: forty four one-hundredths of a percent.
Commonly accepted hyphenated words are those with the prefix ex, self, or all, or words with the suffixes free, odd, elect. Examples: salt-free, ex-husband, self-employed, all-encompassing, ninety-odd dollars, president-elect.
Don’t expect to remember all this. Keep a good grammar reference handy, such as Grammatically Correct: The Writer’s Essential Guide to Punctuation, Spelling, Style, Usage and Grammar by Anne Stilman.
