Hyphenation: The Eternal Question

According to the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS), one of the most common questions for both writers and editors concerns hyphenation. Compound words and phrases can be either open (as in service industry), hyphenated (as in decision-maker) or closed (as in handcrafted). When you can’t find the compound you’re looking for in the dictionary—and sometimes even when you can—there are several recommendations that CMOS makes that are easy to remember and will make your life much easier. Let’s go over a few of the most important here.

Adverbs Ending in -ly Are Forever Open, Almost

Adverbs that end in -ly are never hyphenated, with only one exception: They are forever open unless constituting part of a larger adjectival phrase. For instance, a restaurant may have an expertly trained chef and a critically acclaimed menu featuring seasonally inspired dishes, but its not-as-amazingly-skilled waitstaff could still ruin the experience. One isn’t likely to come across these clusters of words often (and it’s often easy to reword), so it’s fairly safe to say that -ly adverbs should be open.

Hyphenate Before Noun, Open After

Generally speaking, compounds are hyphenated when they occur before a noun they modify, but not after. The stadium with fan-friendly parking sells deeply discounted tickets the day of events. (Remember our -ly adverbs.) The parking for the stadium is fan friendly, however. Over-the-counter medicines are indeed often sold over the counter and sometimes off the shelf. But off-the-shelf medications often aren’t as strong as their prescription counterparts, although some of the former are prescription strength.

Some compounds, which you can find in the dictionary, are permanently hyphenated or closed. An air-conditioned room will not necessarily always have an air-conditioner in the window. The building planner, or primary decision-maker, will determine that.

Beware Prefixes

Style guides abound with differing treatments of prefixes. CMOS is fairly simple: closed, with a few exceptions. There are three exceptions that are most common:

(1) before a capitalized word or numeral, such as sub-Saharan, pre-1950; (2) before a compound term, such as non-self-sustaining, pre-Vietnam War;[1] (3) to separate two i’s, two a’s, and other combinations of letters or syllables that might cause misreading, such as anti-intellectual, extra-alkaline, pro-life.

The most widely practiced of these is the first example; we can (nearly) all agree on that much.

However…

Hyphens to separate repeated vowels are also common, although they are not necessarily always required. For instance, a book may have multiple coequal coauthors and coeditors who cooperate as coworkers, but such a style may be difficult to co-opt. In general, this style follows Merriam-Webster’s spellings. For words not in the dictionary, like co-organize, a hyphen can aid readability. The important thing is to be consistent!

The use of hyphens between successive e’s is perhaps most contentious, but here again CMOS has a preference for sparse hyphenation. I may have reedited this work several times, but only because I don’t want to re-cover any ground or make anyone unnecessarily reread it. Different publishers have differing requirements, but we at TIPS can manage the minor details like that to help you focus on the most important thing: writing.

For more Tips from TIPS about writing, check out our guide to commonly misused words and phrases, learn about colons and semicolons, and explore creating notes and bibliographies.

And if you’re ready to take your work to the next level, including assistance with handling technicalities, style, or organization of your work, contact TIPS Technical Publishing at (919) 933-2629 or email robert.b.kern@gmail.com.

[1] Technically we’d prefer an en dash here as an editorial flourish to separate a modifier from an open compound, but this is a trend that goes mostly unnoticed.

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