These tiny marks might seem unimportant, but punctuation plays a big role in communicating your message to your reader.
Before we start looking at the mistakes you need to get clear in your mind that Hyphens are not Dashes.
Now the mistakes. First a look at the two most common mistakes with hyphens: More than one adjective before a noun and Numbers as adjectives.
Hyphenate numbers between 21 and 99 further explains the use of hyphens with numbers.
The pages Hyphenating prefixes, Always hyphenate self, Hyphenating family relationships and Hyphenating suffixes show you how not to hyphenate prefixes and suffixes.
How to use hyphens with adverbs not ending in -ly and Never use hyphens with very nor adverbs ending in -ly will show you how to use hyphens with adverbs and compound adjectives.
The pages Never use hyphens as commas, Never use hyphens when you want to list things and Don’t add hyphens to phrasal verbs will show you how not to use hyphens.
Part 1 of this mini course looks at commas.
Part 3 of this mini course looks at apostrophes.
Part 4 of this mini course looks at all the other remaining punctuation marks and finishes with an English Punctuation Quiz.
