Compounds with "non": hyphen or no hyphen?

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Guest  #64874  Mon, 03 Jan 05 01:46 AM
Greetings--
Is it true that most compounds with "non" are written with a hyphen in British English but are written as one word with no hyphen in American English? Or are things more complicated than this?
Cheers
Robert
  
Mister Micawber  #64880  Mon, 03 Jan 05 02:35 AM

In AmE, 'non-' and most other common prefixes are used without the hyphen except in the case of new coinages and words that look confusing without it, like 'non-Hodgkin's lymphoma'. I would be surprised if the rule were different in BrE.

  
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Anonymous  #494007  Fri, 28 Mar 08 01:48 PM
I'm afraid that in British English the rule *is* different. We do indeed tend to use hyphens after the prefix "non-" (which avoids the possibility of mispronouncing words such as "nonnative" ["non-native" in BrE]).

As regards other prefixes, "pre-" and "co-" still sometimes take a hyphen (particularly where the second part of the word starts with a vowel and could lead to an erroneous pronunciation, e.g. pre-empt, co-opted). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "micro-organism" is also the preferred form, for similar reasons. 

  
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