• Learn the definition of a hyphen

• A hyphen looks like this:

        -

• A hyphen is:

• used both to join words and to separate syllables

• often confused with a dash, which is longer

• used as a multiple-word modifier, as in blood-red moon

• used to denote syllabification, as syl-lab-i-fi-ca-tion

• Nouns formed of a noun and an adjective are frequently hyphenated, as death-wish

• names for numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine have hyphens

• if a word is split onto two lines, a hyphen will usually be inserted immediately before the split