GRAMMAR  |  Apostrophe - Its/It's - Whose/Who's - Your/You're

Hyphen

One of the most important uses of the hyphen in English is to turn a noun or verb phrase into an adjective. Here are some examples:

• a short tempered, argumentative god ... SHOULD BE short-tempered
• near death experiences ... SHOULD BE near-death
• a soul searching journey ... SHOULD BE soul-searching
• able bodied suitors ... SHOULD BE able-bodied
• a sweet faced girl ... SHOULD BE sweet-faced
• flesh and blood people ... SHOULD BE flesh-and-blood
• a deep, deck rattling explosion rocked the boat ... SHOULD BE deck-rattling
• an eight year old child ... SHOULD eight-year-old

You can see more examples in this Wikipedia article. As Wikipedia points out, sometimes there is an actual ambiguity that is being resolved, as in "man eating shark" versus "man-eating shark."

Mostly, though, this is an example of where a written mark is being used to convey that fine shade of intonation when you speak - if you pay careful attention, you will notice that when you say one of these compound modifiers OUT LOUD, you pronounce it as if it were a single word, with much less "space" between the words than between other phrasal units.

So, what this type of hyphen is trying to do is to convey in writing the way that, when you speak, you turn the compound modifier into what is really a compound word, even if the word neardeath is not in the dictionary as a "word" ... at least, not yet!

Adjective versus Adverb. Sometimes the hyphen is used to distinguish between the adverbial use of the phrase, and adjectival use. When you are dealing with a true adverb-verb phrase, you cannot use the hyphen:

• It is well known that pigs can't fly. [known is the verb, and well is an adverb]

When you are dealing with an adverb-adjective phrase, the use of the hyphen is optional, although the hyphenated version is probably easier for readers to quickly comprehend!

• Snoopy is a well known character from the comic strip, "Peanuts."
• Snoopy is a well-known character from the comic strip, "Peanuts."

Since adverbs like "well" can be used to modify adjectives, you can get away without using a hyphen here if that is what you prefer!