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Difficultés anglaises

> hyphen A small stroke (-) that is used to join two words together or to indicate that a word has been broken at the end of a line because of lack of space. It is used in a variety of situations.• The hyphen is used as the prefixed element in a proper noun, as in "pre-Christian", "post-Renaissance", "anti-British", "anti-Semitic", "pro-French" and "pro-Marxism". It is also used before dates or numbers, as in "pre-1914", "pre-1066", "post-1920", "post-1745". It is also used before abbreviations, as in "pro-BBC", "anti-EEC" and "anti-TUC".• The hyphen is used for clarification. Some words are ambiguous without the presence of a hyphen. For example, "re-cover", as in "re-cover a chair", is spelt with a hyphen to differentiate it from "recover", as in "The accident victim is likely to recover". Similarly, it is used in "re-form", meaning "to form again", as in "They have decided to re-form the society which closed last year", to differentiate the word from "reform", meaning "to improve, to become better behaved", as in "He was wild as a young man but he has reformed now". Similarly "re-count" in the sense of "count again", as in "re-count the number of votes cast", is spelt with a hyphen to differentiate it from "recount" in the sense of "tell", as in "recount what happened on the night of the accident".• The hyphen was formerly used to separate a prefix from the main element of a word if the main element begins with a vowel, as in "pre-eminent", but there is a growing tendency in modern usage to omit the hyphen in such cases. At the moment both "pre-eminent" and "preeminent" are found. However, if the omission of the hyphen results in double i, the hyphen is usually retained, as in "anti-inflationary" and "semi-insulated".• The hyphen was formerly used in words formed with the prefix non-, as in "non-functional", "non-political", "non-flammable" and "non-pollutant". However there is a growing tendency to omit the hyphen in such cases, as in "nonfunctional" and "nonpollutant". At the moment both forms of such words are common.• The hyphen is usually used with "ex-" in the sense of "former", as in "ex-wife" and "ex-president".• The hyphen is usually used when "self-" is prefixed to words, as in "self-styled", "a self-starter" and "self-evident".• Use or non-use of the hyphen is often a matter of choice, house style or frequency of usage, as in "drawing-room" or "drawing room", and "dining-room" or "dining room". There is a modern tendency to punctuate less frequently than was formerly the case and so in modern usage use of the hyphen in such expressions is less frequent. The length of compounds often affects the inclusion or omission of the hyphen. Compounds of two short elements that are well-established words tend not to be hyphenated, as in "bedroom" and "toothbrush". Compound words with longer elements are more likely to be hyphenated, as in "engine-driver" and "carpet-layer".• Some fixed compounds of two or three or more words are always hyphenated, as in "son-in-law", "good-for-nothing" and "devil-may-care"• Some compounds formed from phrasal verbs are sometimes hyphenated and sometimes not. Thus both "take-over" and "takeover" are common, and "run-down" and "rundown" are both common. Again the use of the hyphen is a matter of choice. However some words formed from phrasal verbs are usually spelt without a hyphen, as in "breakthrough".• Compound adjectives consisting of two elements, the second of which ends in -ed, are usually hyphenated, as in "heavy-hearted", "fair-haired", "fair-minded" and "long-legged".• Compound adjectives when they are used before nouns are usually hyphenated, as in "gas-fired central heating", "oil-based paints", "solar-heated" buildings" and "chocolate-coated" biscuits".• Compounds containing some adverbs are usually hyphenated, sometimes to avoid ambiguity, as in "his best-known opera", a "well-known singer", "an ill-considered venture" and "a half-planned scheme".• Generally adjectives and participles preceded by an adverb are not hyphenated if the adverb ends in -ly, as in "a highly talented singer", "neatly pressed clothes" and "beautifully dressed young women".• In the case of two or more compound hyphenated adjectives with the same second element qualifying the same noun, the common element need not be repeated but the hyphen should be, as in "two-" and three-bedroom houses" and "long- and short-haired dogs".• The hyphen is used in compound numerals from 21 to 99 when they are written in full, as in "thirty-five gallons", "forty-four years", "sixty-seven miles" and "two hundred and forty-five miles". Compound numbers such as "three hundred" and "two thousand" are not hyphenated.• Hyphens are used in fractions, as in "three-quarters", "two-thirds", and "seven-eighths".• Hyphens are also used in such number phrases as "a seventeenth-century play", "a sixteenth-century church", "a five-gallon pail", "a five-year contract" and a "third-year student".• The other use of hyphens is to break words at the ends of lines. Formerly people were more careful about where they broke words. Previously, words were broken up according to etymological principles, but there is a growing tendency to break words according to how they are pronounced. Some dictionaries or spelling dictionaries give help with the division and hyphenation of individual words. General points are that one-syllable words should not be divided and words should not be broken after the first letter of a word or before the last letter. Care should be taken not to break up words, for example by forming elements that are words in their own right, in such a way as to mislead the reader. Thus divisions such as "the-rapist" and "mans-laughter" should be avoided. Pour éviter fautes de grammaire, contresens et confusions. The English Usage Dictionary est le parfait complément des dictionnaires bilingues, du dictionnaire de définitions anglaises et du Thesaurus. Ce dictionnaire signale toutes les difficultés que recèle l'usage d'un mot: orthographe, grammaire, prononciation, homonymies, etc. Exemple d'article du dictionnaire English Usage Dictionary