Hyphens and Dashes
Created | Updated Nov 13, 2009
Normal punctuation uses hyphens (a short horizontal line) and dashes (a long horizontal line) for different things. There's the added complication that dashes don't display correctly in some cases on computers, so hyphens are often used instead.
Hyphens
The hyphen looks like this:
-
The hyphen has three main uses:
Joining a prefix to a word
post-operation trauma. In this case, post is a prefix which doesn't mean anything on its own. For some prefixes it is OK to omit the hyphen. For example, reprint. The re prefix doesn't usually take a hyphen, but is better wtih a hyphen if the word starts with a vowel: re-address rather than readdress. This prevents confusion.
Joining two words together
Something that eats men can be a man-eater. But it could also be a maneater or a man eater. There's always confusion as to which to use, and it is just experience which dictates. But when the collection of words is used as an adjective, hyphens are used:
The lion was a man eater. He was a man-eating lion.
The phrase 'man-eating lion' needs the hyphen. Without it, it would be 'man eating lion' which means a man eating a lion.
Breaking a word that is too big to fit on the end of a line
Large words which occur at the end of lines can cause a problem, as if you move the word to the beginning of the next line it leaves a large gap. You can break in the middle of a word by putting a hyphen in the appropriate place. Like this:
This is a sentence which ends in a word which is supercalifragi-
listicexpialidocious.
Hyphens should be put in at syllable boundaries. For example, the word 'boundaries' could be broken at bound-aries or boun-daries but not at bou-ndaries.
Dashes
Dashes are horizontal lines which are longer than hyphens. They can be medium length, known as an 'en dash' or long, known as an 'em dash'. The names come from the letters 'n' and 'm'. An en dash should be the same width as the letter n while an em dash is as wide as an m. Whether you use en dashes or em dashes seems to be a matter of personal taste. The purpose of the dash is to break up a sentence. You may want a sudden change of subject in the middle of the sentence or a parenthetical comment—similar to the one here—which breaks the flow of the sentence. Dashes are used for this, and in normal English punctuation there are no spaces around them.
Hyphens and Dashes on the Web
Hyphens
In Web documents, hyphens are entered just by typing them. The hyphen is beside the 0 (zero) on a standard keyboard.
Soft Hyphens
If you have a long word that may occur at the end of a line, you can put a 'soft hyphen' into it. If the word occurs at the end of a line and doesn't have room, the browser will put in a hyphen at the point where the soft hyphen is marked and will put the rest of the word on the next line. If the word occurs anywhere else in the line, the soft hyphen is not displayed. Since you don't know what size the browser is going to be, you don't know where in the line the word will occur, so for really long words it is worth breaking them up in appropriate places by inserting soft hyphens. For those really long invented words like pneumono... you might want to put in five or six soft hyphens.
Type special code ­ to enter a soft hyphen in a web document. That is, type an ampersand followed by 'shy' followed by a semicolon. For example, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious which has two soft hyphens in it.
Here's a section out of an h2g2 Entry on the Longest German Word. We've put it into a small box to show how it would appear on in a small window:
Picture the scene, if you will. You're in Vienna standing on the banks of the blue Danube taking in the majesty of the river that cuts a swathe across Europe leaving waltzes, romance and boat tours in its wake. There's a long history of shipping on the Danube and sure enough there's some information in your guidebook about it. Alas, it's all in German. Not to worry, you've got your trusty phrase book at hand and so you set about finding out what this Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft that the guide book mentions is all about. |
Note how the very long German word is too big to fit at the end of the line so it appears at the start of the next line, leaving a large gap at the end of the line. If you sprinkle the word liberally with soft hyphens, then the browser will pick the appropriate one and break the word there:
Picture the scene, if you will. You're in Vienna standing on the banks of the blue Danube1 taking in the majesty of the river that cuts a swathe across Europe leaving waltzes, romance and boat tours in its wake. There's a long history of shipping on the Danube and sure enough there's some information in your guidebook about it. Alas, it's all in German. Not to worry, you've got your trusty phrase book at hand and so you set about finding out what this Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft that the guide book mentions is all about. |
Dashes
Dashes are entered by typing the special codes – and — rather than entering the dash characters directly. They should not be cut and pasted from other documents or typed in using numeric codes, as some browser will have problems displaying them.
Special Notes for h2g2
In h2g2, it is the standard that dashes should have spaces on either side of them. This is different from normal English punctuation. The reason for this standard is that it helps to break up words when they occur at the end of lines, although most modern browsers have no real problems either way.
You should not use dashes in the titles of h2g2 Entries, as some browsers are unable to display them correctly. You should use hyphens instead.
