Journey Of A Writer

Hyphen Punctuation Practice

I Said Hyphen Not En or Em Dash; It Is Different

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Hello again, fellow writer!

Welcome to another writing practice as part of your writing quest. If you’re here for the first time, welcome to the practice part of your writing quest.

This article is all about the hyphen.

I call them the great connectors because that’s what they do. They connect words, dates, thoughts, feelings, you name it. And it’s all about making sure the sentence is clear for the reader. Which I find funny.

Because out of all the punctuation you could ever learn, this one has the most complicated and the longest list of rules.

Will I give you all of them? No. This isn’t for academic writing.

This is for the writers who just want to use it. The uses I think are most useful for you are below.

Uses of The Hyphen

• Prevent confusion (It’s the Barbie-pink brush that I want, not the electric-pink comb).
• Compound words/adjectives (I drove my new blue-black sedan off the lot and immediately got a flat tire).
• Reusing a sound/meaning [look up “reduplicative” for more] (Okey-dokey, I can…