No hyphen is needed when such terms are used as modifiers if the meaning is clear and unambiguous without the hyphen. Examples include third grade teacher, chocolate chip cookie, special effects ...

Hyphens are only used to combine certain words together. They are not strong enough to set off phrases or words from a sentence. Use hyphens in the following situations: Use in compound numbers and ...

KitKat containing a hyphen is yet another example of the Mandela Effect. It was so widely believed that KitKat contained a hyphen that the brand itself tried to set the record straight on X back ...

For example, if you think “pre1960” is an unambiguous as “pre-1960,” that doesn’t make it right. The hyphen is requisite. Another deviation from the basic rule: adverbs ending in “ly ...

Hyphens clarify pronunciation and meaning when a word with a prefix is spelled the same as another word. For example, "recreation" is something we do for fun, but "re-creation" is done to create ...

Good questions have been piling up in my inbox lately. Ed in Albany, N.Y., had a question about a recent column in which I mentioned people “who just won’t stop using the word ‘over’ wrong ...

During the recent gathering of the American Copy Editors Society, a lot of “hyphen” jokes made the rounds. One was “Why we need hyphens: Because thirty-odd editors is not the same as thirty odd ...

KitKat, the chocolate snack, used to have a hyphen between "Kit" and "Kat," so its official name was once "Kit-Kat." For instance, in late 2023, a Reddit post shared in the Mandela Effect ...