It seems major newspaper editors aren’t immune from one of the most common errors I see from my corporate writing training students.
This was on the front page of today’s Daily Telegraph in Sydney:
Can you see the problem? It’s confusing, because it’s unclear whether it’s saying two things, “New risk” and “Free pill”, or one thing, “New risk-free pill”.
That tiny hyphen makes all the difference.
It’s called a compound modifier, because the two words must be combined to get the intended meaning.
Here’s another example, from our “Get it Write” professional writing masterclass:
- small business adviser
- small-business adviser
In (1), the business adviser could be a dwarf. But with the hyphen in (2), it now means the person is an adviser to small business.
So watch your hyphens; they can really change your meaning and confuse your readers.
And whatever you do, don’t use a hyphen (-) when you really mean to use a dash (—). Here’s an easy explanation of the difference between hyphens and dashes.
By the way, can you see where I’ve missed inserting a hyphen in my first sentence? Let me know in the comments!
3 thoughts on “Don’t syphon the hyphen: Compound modifiers”
Great example, Paul. Nice one.
Great advice Paul – as always.
Trouble is, somebody has syphoned the hyphen.
Just joking, where can I find the hyphen on my keyboard?
thanks
Good question, Steve. Some keyboards differ, but on mine the hyphen is on the top row to the right of the “0” (zero), as you can see on this keyboard image.
Standard USA and UK keyboards are the same in this regard, as you can see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_and_American_keyboards
To create a dash, you can use two hyphens, one straight after the other.
When you do that, MS Word and some other programs often automatically change them to a dash for you.
You can also use your computer’s character map to generate a dash.