To hyphenate or not?

Question

As a non-native speaker of English and an engineer by training, I always get confused about hyphenation and almost always end up referring to Google every time I need to make that decision. Does anybody know of a concise, comprehensive style guide to hyphenation that explains this rather complex issue, once and for all?

Answer 1

Here is an example:

The dog weighed 100 pounds.

The 100-pound dog leaped at me.

When you place a specific descriptive modifier before a noun, you may need a hyphen.

The race was one mile.

The winner of the one-mile race had never expected such an outstanding result.

Answer 2

The Chicago Manual of Style is a trustworthy style guide to help you with hyphenation. The important thing to remember is to be consistent with how you use your hyphens and not confuse them with a dash. A hyphen is usually used in compound adjectives if they come before the noun they describe (ex: eight-grade students) while a dash is used to link two parts of a sentence. Hope that helps!