One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the general population’s complete lack of understanding/awareness of correct grammar, especially working professionals. I’ll refrain from a discussion regarding the extreme use of exclamation points in emails of non friends, which really has less to do with grammar and more to do with professionalism, but I digress.

This post is about the hyphen (cue School House Rock music). Now, I’m not usually one to brag, but I did darn well on my AP grammar test in college. But like all good journalism students, my awareness of grammar and general knowledge of AP style have waned over the past couple years.  So I surprised myself recently with the realization that I still know very little about proper hyphen placement.

Here are some of my recent hyphen struggles (like most good AP students I defaulted to the hyphen, usually to my detriment):

… our over-sexualized nation.
Reasons why I should never leave the house without make-up.
She is an under-appreciated employee.

The list goes on. Makeup is a bit of a wild card in this post since most of my questions have involved prefixes and suffixes in regards to the ‘ole hyphen.

Lucky for me (and you!) I have my trusty Working with Words – A Handbook for Media Writers and Editors near my desk at all times. While the AP Stylebook is a very handy reference, it does not typically provide detailed grammar rules with numerous examples. So in Working with Words, “Chapter 10 – Spelling Relief” has a section titled, “Hyphenation as a Spelling Problem.” YES! It’s 21 pages long, so I’ll just give you some highlights.

• Suffixes are not usually hyphenated unless adding one would result in three l’s in a row:
  • catlike
  • shell-less
• Sometimes, compound adjectives in which the “suffix” is really a separate word are hyphenated, and other times they’re not:
  • penny-wise
  • streetwise
• Many compounds that use a preposition such as down, in, off, out, over, or up are hyphenated, but many other compound words with prepositions at the end have dropped the hyphen:
  • break-in, carry-over, close-up, fade-out
  • breakup, fallout, holdover, takeoff
• Prefixes generally not hyphenated (my list, the whole thing is WAY too long): a, anti, bi, by , dis, full, hyper, mid, mini, multi, non, pre, re, semi, ultra, under, up
• These prefixes are generally hyphenated: after, all, co, ex, like, odd, off, one, pro, self (exceptions selfish, selfless, selfsame), well, wide
• Words beginning with the prefixes half and pre are sometimes hyphenated, sometimes not. You’ll just have to look them up. (that is word for word what the book said…awesome.)

There’s more but you’re bored and I’m tired of typing. Here is a classic example though: long time (n.) longtime (adj.).

The moral of the story is, have the book handy because there are very few hard and fast rules and I usually can’t remember them anyway.

*** I would like to apologize in advance for the inevitable grammar/spelling mistakes in this post and all others. I solely edit these and it takes many pairs of eyes to ensure all errors are found.***