mistake in hyphenation
A hyphen (-) is a mark that joins two elements into a single word. Line-wrapping word processors have largely eliminated the need to hyphenate syllables of a word broken across a line end, but the hyphen retains several important functions. When a noun phrase is used as an adjective (for example, "the fiction-writing enterprise" or "eighteenth-century literature"), use a hyphen between elements. It is not otherwise necessary to hyphenate words in a noun phrase (for instance, "I enjoy fiction writing" or "Napoleon was born in the eighteenth century"). Do not confuse the hyphen with the dash, which is written either as a long horizontal line (--) or as a pair of hyphens (--).
Copyright 1996 Yale University. Revised on Monday, May 20, 1996