Non-Designer’s Type Book, The, Second Edition

Hyphens

Just because you know how to use em and en dashes, don’t ignore hyphens! Em and en dashes do not replace hyphens—they simply replace the incorrect uses of the hyphen. If you are breaking a word at the end of a line, or if you are using a compound adjective as in “blue-green eyes,” of course type a hyphen!

The following situation is difficult to describe, so I am going to illustrate it instead. When you have something like this:

Martha was both a first-place and second-place winner in the gravedigging contest.

“First-place” and “second-place” are adjectives composed of two words, making them “compound.” You probably want to combine those compound adjectives into something like this:

Martha was both a first- and second-place winner in ...