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Hyphens in essay writing

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1. Hyphens are most commonly used to join words when forming compounds:

mother-in-law president-elect
matter-of-fact author-critic

2. They are also used after prefixes – especially where it is necessary to avoid an awkward or confusing sequence of letters:

re-enter co-operation pre-ignition

3. Notice the difference between a compound word and the same terms used separately:

a fifteenth-century manuscript in the fifteenth century

4. Hyphens should be used where it is necessary to avoid ambiguity:

two-year-old cats two year-old cats

5. They should also be used to distinguish terms which are spelled
identically, but which have different meanings:

reformation re-formation
recover re-cover
resign re-sign

6. Hyphens are used when new terms are formed from compounds, but they are dropped when the compound is accepted into common usage. (This process is usually more rapid in the USA than in Europe.)

bathtub bookshelf clubhouse

7. This phenomenon is currently visible in computer technology,where all three forms of a term may co-exist:

Word processor Word-processor Wordprocessor

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