ESL General English Grammar Questions

Re: Compounds with "non": hyphen or no hyphen?

Anonymous — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 13:48:28 GMT

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.

Re: Compounds with "non": hyphen or no hyphen?

Mister Micawber — Mon, 03 Jan 2005 02:35:08 GMT

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.

Compounds with "non": hyphen or no hyphen?

Guest — Mon, 03 Jan 2005 01:46:35 GMT

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