Prefixes with Special Hyphenation Rules

The rules for hyphenating prefixes are different from the rules for hyphenating compound modifiers and nouns. There are a lot of case-specific rules and a lot of disagreement between styles. If you don't need to be exactly in line with a style guide but you just want an easy guideline, omit hyphens with prefixes unless it looks funny. So "nonprofit" but "pre-Columbian." If you want a more thorough explanation, it's in this podcast episode!

 

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Tags: COPY EDITING, GRAMMAR, HYPHENATING PREFIXES AND SUFFIXES, hyphenation

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