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three-quarters

five-ninths

(iii) Hyphens are used to join compound words so

that they become one word:

my son-in-law

a twenty-pound note

her happy-go-lucky smile

You will sometimes need to check in a

dictionary whether a word is hyphenated or not.

Sometimes words written separately in a ten￾year-old dictionary will be hyphenated in a more

modern one; sometimes words hyphenated in an

older dictionary will now be written as one

word.

Is it washing machine or washing-machine,

wash-basin or washbasin, print-out or printout?

Such words need to be checked individually.

(iv) Hyphens are used with some prefixes:

co-author, ex-wife, anti-censorship

Check individual words in a dictionary if you are

in doubt.

Always use a hyphen when you are using a

prefix before a word that begins with a capital

letter:

pro-British, anti-Christian, un-American

Sometimes a hyphen is used for the sake of

clarity. There is a difference in meaning between

the words in these pairs:

re-cover and recover

re-form and reform

co-respondent and correspondent

(v) Hyphens are also used to indicate a range of

figures or dates:

109

HYPHENS