Grammar expert June Casagrande tackles the use of hyphens with a close look at eight multiword terms that writers sometimes get wrong.

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - About 16,000 words have succumbed to pressures of the Internet age and lost their hyphens in a new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Bumble-bee is now ...

The definition of hyphen has been “a punctuation sign to divide or compound words, word elements or numbers.” (Merriam-Webster). In the Twenty-first century we’ve seen an obsession by some with the ...

A hyphen that prints if it winds up at the end of the line, but does not print otherwise. Contrast with hard hyphen. See discretionary hyphen. THIS DEFINITION IS FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY. All other ...

It seems we're always declaring our great fondness for this punctuation mark or that one. Oh, the whimsical nature of the semicolon and how smart she makes us feel. Oh, the gorgeous curves of the ...

Which is right: a backup plan, a back-up plan or a back up plan? How about a cutoff date, a cut-off date or a cut off date? A takeout menu, a take-out menu or a take out menu? The answer: There is no ...

Dr. Ink recalls a story in the St. Pete Times from long ago in which Jimmy Carter was quoted as saying that if Teddy Kennedy ran against him, “I’ll whip his a–.” That may be the first time Doc noticed ...