Hyphens

This is a hyphen -

You might call it a dash.

Just in case you didn't see it here is a row of hyphens - - - - - - - - - - -

A hyphen is a very-useful device which can improve your writing in two ways:

Firstly, it allows you to create some more-interesting descriptions. If you wrote about a cornflower-blue sky, it would sound much better than if you simply said blue sky. Similarly, a food-stained cloth sounds better than a dirty cloth.

Secondly, it makes it easier to understand what you are saying. If, for example, I said that I bought a second hand oven, you wouldn't be completely sure what I meant.
I might be saying that I now have two hand ovens. I wonder what a hand oven is? An oven for cooking hands? An oven small enough to fit in your hand?
What I actually mean, of course, is that I am not the first owner of the oven. So, if I say that I bought a second-hand oven, you will know exactly what I mean: the oven is second-hand.

Here is another example: sweet apple pie.
Is a sweet apple pie the same as a sweet-apple pie?
Can you see the difference?
A sweet apple pie is an apple pie which is sweet.
A sweet-apple pie is a pie made from sweet apples.

What does this sentence mean?
There were ten year old cars in the garage.
Does it mean that there were ten cars which were one-year old, or does it mean that there were several cars, each of which was ten years old? The answer is that we will never know unless someone puts in a hyphen. Can you see the difference now?
There were ten year-old cars in the garage.
There were ten-year-old cars in the garage.

Time for you to do something

Choose the right sentence from each box. When you have finished, click on the 'Answers' button to see how many you got right. The 'Reset boxes' button restores the boxes to how they were.