A method to differentiate a dash placed at the end of a line to indicate that a word has been separated into two parts because it did not fit on a line, from a hyphen inserted between two or more words, such as "hands-on", "brother-in-law", or "state-of-the-art".
It is best to differentiate a dash placed at the end of a line to indicate that a word has been separated into two parts because it did not fit on a line, from a hyphen in a compound word such as "hands-on".
A "compound word" is comprised of two or more words and has a hyphen between each word.
If a line ends in "able-" and the next line says "bodied", readers automatically interpret "able", followed by "body", to mean "ablebodied". Most people do not remember that the correct way to write "ablebodied" is with a hyphen (able-bodied). I call this method to differentiate dashes from hyphens the "next line hyphen".
If the last word on a line of text says "for-", and the first word of the next line says "profit", the logical way to interpret the dash is as being a dash, though in reality, the writer means “for-profit”, not “forprofit”.
A "compound word" is comprised of two or more words and has a hyphen between each word.
If a line ends in "able-" and the next line says "bodied", readers automatically interpret "able", followed by "body", to mean "ablebodied". Most people do not remember that the correct way to write "ablebodied" is with a hyphen (able-bodied). I call this method to differentiate dashes from hyphens the "next line hyphen".
If the last word on a line of text says "for-", and the first word of the next line says "profit", the logical way to interpret the dash is as being a dash, though in reality, the writer means “for-profit”, not “forprofit”.
by but for February 24, 2018