Hyphens are commonly used to break up a word at the end of a line. The remainder of the word appears on the following line. This function is usually done correctly by modern word processors. A second, more difficult application of hyphenation comes when forming compound words. Let's examine these examples:

Scientific American English
Scientific-American English
Scientific American-English
Scientific-American-English

The first example, Scientific American English, is hard to interpret because we don't know how to group the words and extract the meaning. This is also true for the last. The second, Scientific-American English, concerns the kind of English found in the monthly magazine Scientific American. The third, Scientific American-English, concerns the English spoken to the West of the Atlantic in a scientific context. The small hyphen has a powerful influence on meaning.

In order to place the hyphens correctly, ask yourself which words belong together. In the second example, the words Scientific and American act together to modify the noun English. In the third example, American and English together define a specific regional style of English.

Typically, hyphens are helpful when two nouns together, or an adjective and a noun together, modify a third noun. How would you hyphenate the following...or would you?

1. grain-boundary sliding
2. long-ranged interaction
3. tip-sample interaction
4. at high frequencies and low amplitudes of excitation NO HYPHENS
5. low-frequency high-amplitude measurements
6. in the direction of the top to the bottom NO HYPHENS
7. the bottom-to-top direction
8. the free electronic Scientific-English lessons

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Created January 5, 1999, by Nancy Burnham and Fred Hutson.