Should you hyphenate “trademark”?
Hyphenation is complicated and people do not always agree about it. If you follow these guidelines, you won't go far wrong.
Quite a few people have asked me about this. Should I hyphenate trademark? What about worldwide? Are there fixed rules about where to put hyphens and how do I know?
The general answers are these:
1. The rules are not fixed so you should use a dictionary or follow the spellchecker (or spell-checker?).
2. For any word that you use regularly in your work, decide what you are going to do and stick to it. Otherwise you will waste a lot of time checking and changing.
A word I often have to write is "proofread". My favourite dictionary (Collins Concise Dictionary) puts "proofread" first, meaning that it is the preferred option, but allows "proof-read" as an alternative. The same dictionary says "trademark" very firmly with no alternatives and "worldwide" but also "trade name".
Just to emphasise how difficult this subject is, the Economist Style Guide on-line devotes a large section to a list of individual words where hyphenation is not obvious. According to my book version of the Economist Style Guide, there should be hyphens in drawing-board, pre-war and think-tank but not in soyabean, underpaid or overrule.
Then there are words like re-mark and re-sign where the un-hyphenated word has a separate meaning altogether. Think about asking someone to re-sign a contract or resign it. The distinction could be significant I think.
Conclusion: it's complicated. Don't ask for logic or rules, just look it up somewhere reputable and then stick to the answer you get.
Comments
jane, very sound advice.
To proofread is one thing, but what if you want to say you have already proofread it , would it be clearer to say I have proof-read it?
By Gillian Bond on 2009 09 24
Why would the hyphen clarify that?
By GTG on 2009 09 28