ShmoopTube

00:04

Hyphens, a la Shmoop. Today is the day of days. At long last, Greg

00:09

is going to meet his girlfriend Cindy's parents.

00:12

Is he nervous? Of course. After all, Cindy's dad is the local sheriff...

00:16

But Greg isn't as unsure of himself as, say, a hyphen faced with the word "email"...

00:21

...or should that be "e...hyphen...mail"? We normally see hyphens in two places. Say

00:28

a line meets the margin right in the middle of a word.

00:31

We'd put a hyphen where the word gets cut off to show that the word continues on the

00:36

next line.

00:39

We also find hyphens joining compound words together.

00:42

Now, the rules for compound words are a little... weird. Basically, there's a lot of flip-flopping.

00:48

We might start with an open compound, which consists of two separate words.

00:52

A couple of years later, the lords and ladies of the English language may decide that said

00:57

open compound should become a hyphenated compound...

01:00

...or even a closed compound, which is where the two words become one, no hyphen necessary.

01:09

If this doesn't seem completely confusing, keep in mind that open compound words that

01:13

have completed the transition into closed compound words...

01:16

...can morph back into open compound words, and vice versa...

01:20

...with phases as a hyphenated compound in between.

01:29

Given all the back and forth when it comes to compound words, it's best to just pick

01:32

up a dictionary and see what it has to say when we're trying to decide whether to hyphenate

01:37

or not. While Merriam-Webster tells us of some words

01:40

that automatically come with hyphens...

01:42

...we might sometimes choose to place a hyphen between two words in order to avoid confusing

01:46

the reader.

01:48

Say we have this sentence, "Right before lunch, Greg was attacked by Cindy's mom's

01:52

floppy...hyphen...eared dog."

01:54

The words "floppy" and "eared" describe the killer pooch. When we hyphenate these

01:59

two words so they read "floppy...hyphen...eared"...

02:01

...this sentence makes sense. The dog has floppy ears...

02:05

...which doesn't stop it from being a menace.

02:07

However, if we left "floppy" and "eared" as two distinct words describing the dog...

02:12

...our readers would imagine a mutt that was both floppy...

02:15

...and eared...

02:17

...whatever that means.

02:21

In this case, placing a hyphen between "floppy" and "eared" keeps our readers from thinking

02:25

we don't know what the heck we're talking about.

02:28

Hyphens can also be used to clarify pronunciation.

02:31

If Cindy's mom mentions over lunch that she needs to re-press her husband's uniform...

02:36

...the one he wears when he's out protecting truth, justice, and the American way...

02:40

...we know she's thinking of the word "re...hyphen...press"...

02:43

...as in, she needs to break the iron and the starch out of the closet.

02:48

The word "repress", sans hyphen, means something completely different...

02:54

...as exemplified by Cindy's joking over lunch that she's had to repress the memories

02:58

of all the boyfriends her dad has chased off over the years.

03:01

In many cases, we use a hyphen when two adjectives appear just before the noun they modify.

03:06

For example, Greg would like to have a long...hyphen...term relationship with Cindy.

03:12

The close...hyphen...minded sheriff, however, would like his daughter to have a different

03:18

boyfriend...

03:18

...maybe one who votes Republican? And hunts? And drives a truck? Is that too much to ask?

03:26

If two adjectives appear after the noun they modify, then we don't use a hyphen.

03:31

We'd just say, for example, that Greg wants his relationship with Cindy to last for the

03:35

long term...

03:36

...but Cindy's dad isn't likely to allow that because he has a closed mind...

03:40

...at least about guys who vote Democrat. We also use hyphens when joining prefixes

03:46

to words that must be capitalized...

03:48

...or when joining single letters to words...

03:51

...or when writing out the numbers twenty-one through ninety-nine.

03:58

For example, we might say, "Greg yelled at Cindy's dad during dessert after the

04:03

sheriff said it was un...hyphen...American to wear T...hyphen...shirts to church on Sunday."

04:09

And there's poor Cindy thinking, "That's boyfriend number thirty...hyphen...two Dad's

04:14

scared away now." Finally, we can use hyphens to string several

04:19

words together to create a super...hyphen...special...hyphen...never...hyphen...before...hyphen...seen... adjective.

04:23

Just don't do that very often, because it gets annoying...

04:27

...kind of like Cindy's stuck...hyphen...in...hyphen...the...hyphen...Dark...hyphen...Ages dad...

Full Transcript