| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
|
Page 254
|
| |
| two or more words written separately, such as salad dressing, Boston terrier, or April Fools’ Day. A hyphenated compound has words connected by a hyphen, such as age-old, mother-in-law, force-feed. A solid compound consists of two words that are written as one word, such as keyboard or typewriter. In addition, a compound may be classified as permanent or temporary. A permanent compound is fixed by common usage and can usually be found in the dictionary, whereas a temporary compound consists of two or more words joined by a hyphen as needed, usually to modify another word or to avoid ambiguity. In general, permanent compounds begin as temporary compounds that become used so frequently they become established as permanent compounds. Likewise many solid compounds begin as separate words, evolve into hyphenated compounds, and later become solid compounds. Although the dictionary is the first place to look when you are trying to determine the status of a particular compound, reference works do not always agree on the current evolutionary form of a compound, nor do they include temporary compounds. The following general rules apply to forming compounds. Keep in mind that words that are made up of a word root plus a prefix or a suffix are not normally considered compounds, strictly speaking. But for convenience we discuss them here since they are also sometimes hyphenated. | 1 |
Prefixes and Suffixes
| | Normally, prefixes and suffixes are joined with a second element without a hyphen, unless doing so would double a vowel or triple a consonant: antianxiety, anticrime, antiwar but anti-intellectual; childlike, taillike but bell-like. Even so, many common prefixes, such as co-, de-, pre-, pro-, and re-, are added without a hyphen although a double vowel is the result: coordinate, preeminent, reenter. | 2 |
| A hyphen is also used when the element following a prefix is capitalized or when the element preceding a suffix is a proper noun: anti-American, America-like. | 3 |
| The hyphen is usually retained in words that begin with all-, ex- (meaning “former"), half-, quasi- (in adjective constructions), and self-: all-around; ex-governor; half-life but halfhearted, halfpenny, halftone, halfway; quasi-scientific but a quasi success; self-defense but selfhood, selfish, selfless, selfsame. | 4 |
| Certain homographs require a hyphen to prevent mistakes in pronunciation and meaning: recreation (enjoyment), re-creation (new creation); release (to let go), re-lease (to rent again). | 5 |
When the Compound Is a Noun or Adjective
| | In order to avoid confusion, compound modifiers are generally hyphenated: fine-wine tasting, high-school teacher, hot-water bottle, minimum-wage worker, | 6 |
| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
|
|
