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The hyphen ‐ is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. [1]The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes (en dash –, em dash — and others), which are wider, or with the minus sign −, which is also wider and usually drawn a little higher to match the crossbar in the plus sign +.
A word without hyphens can be made wrappable by having soft hyphens in it. When the word isn't wrapped (i.e., isn't broken across lines), the soft hyphen isn't visible. But if the word is wrapped across lines, this is done at the soft hyphen, at which point it is shown as a visible hyphen on the top line where the word is broken.
The 7th Edition, published in 2007, stipulates that the use of periods, question marks, and exclamation points as "terminal punctuation" to end a sentence should be followed by a single space. [ 28 ] Until the early 2000s, the Modern Language Association (MLA) left room for its adherents to single or double sentence space.
Hyphens should never be used after adverbs that end in "ly." (Write "a slowly cooked meal," not "a slowly-cooked meal.") If there is no risk of confusion, the hyphen may be omitted from a two-word modifier. In the sentence, "I failed a high-school class," the hyphen is optional.
Editors should structure articles with consistent, reader-friendly layouts and formatting (which are detailed in this guide). Where more than one style or format is acceptable under the MoS, one should be used consistently within an article and should not be changed without good reason. Edit warring over stylistic choices is unacceptable. [b]
Soft hyphens also creates word-break opportunities, but will add a hyphen rather than a space. In other words, a soft hyphen is a hyphen inserted into a word not otherwise hyphenated, to be displayed or typeset only if it falls at the end of a line of text.
At the end of a line, a word is separated in writing into parts, conventionally called "syllables", if it does not fit the line and if moving it to the next line would make the first line much shorter than the others. This can be a particular problem with very long words, and with narrow columns in newspapers.