

In 2017, the stylebook accepted “singular they” as a non-gendered pronoun. Another big shift came in March when the AP announced the percent sign was OK when used with a numeral. And the AP Stylebook kept wording it has used previously that says “‘use of the hyphen is far from standardized’ and, as in the past, note that it can be ‘a matter of taste, judgment and style sense.’ Then, as in the past, we proceed to give many examples of when hyphens are indeed necessary.”ĪP Stylebook changes often spark outrage and celebration.“… No hyphen is needed in ‘first grade student,’ just as no hyphen is needed in ‘high school student,’” Froke said. As of Wednesday, the AP changed some wording that was part of the hyphen entry’s introduction for years: “Specifically, we are deleting the long-standing guidance that hyphen use is ‘optional in most cases’ and that ‘the fewer hyphens the better.’ That wording did not reflect the reality of the rest of the entry, or of our actual practice,” Froke said.In addition to adding the hyphen back into -quarter phrases, here are more clarifications and changes: “The fact that our users are so invested is invaluable to us,” Froke said. RELATED TRAINING: Sweat this, not that: Real rules vs. They are planning a riot.īased on feedback, the AP made some changes and clarifications to its guidance on hyphens. We updated our hyphen guidance this year to say no hyphen is needed in a compound modifier if the modifier is commonly recognized as one phrase, and if the meaning is clear and unambiguous without the hyphen. “To correct one misperception: The updates we announced in March did not call for fewer hyphens or no hyphens in compound modifiers,” Froke said.īut when AP tweeted the guidance in August, as Merrill Perlman wrote for CJR, it sparked “linguistic pandemonium.” Her example: “Chocolate chip cookie” doesn’t need a hyphen.


In a March Stylebook update, Froke said, the AP noted the difference between commonly recognized noun phrases and compound modifiers in phrases. So to conform, we are returning the hyphen to the ‘-quarter’ phrases.” “We agree that, for instance, ‘first-half run’ should be hyphenated. “Thanks to input from our users, we are reversing our decision to delete the hyphen from ‘first-quarter touchdown’ and ‘third-quarter earnings,’” AP Stylebook Editor Paula Froke told Poynter in an email. The Associated Press is reversing some of its March 2019 guidance on how we use the wedding band of the punctuation world. For this fine control, place the insertion point where you want to insert a hyphen, and then do one of the following:įor a word that is always hyphenated and can be separated onto two lines, such as "two-thirds," press HYPHEN (-).įor a word or number that is always hyphenated and can't be separated on two lines, such as "555-0123," press CTRL+SHIFT+HYPHEN (-).įor a word that can be hyphenated, but only when it is necessary to split the word onto two lines, press CTRL+HYPHEN (-).Hyphen defenders (or is it hyphen-defenders?), take heart. You might want finer control over hyphenation in some instances, such as in hyphenated names or technical terms. In the Hyphenation zone box, enter the value that you want.įewer short syllables before or after the hyphenĪdd hyphens by using the keyboard for words that can and cannot be separated You may want to change the frequency of hyphens in your publication for layout or aesthetic reasons.Ĭlick inside a text box, then select the Text Box Tools tab, and then click Hyphenation. Change the number of hyphens that Publisher adds Tip: If you do not want a word to be automatically hyphenated you can either turn off automatic hyphenation or insert a carriage return before the word to force it onto a new line.
