Hyphen, shmyphen, who cares whether you use hyphens? A Facebook ad drove home the lesson that hyphens’ role as connectors is important.
“Imagine life pain free,” said the ad. This hyphenless sentence could be interpreted as “Imagine getting ‘life pain’ at no cost.” No, thanks, I’ll pass on that offer.
The advertiser should have written, “Imagine life pain-free.” This makes it clear that “pain” relates to “free,” not life. It’s important to use hyphens if their absence changes your meaning or makes it unclear. This is true even though compound modifiers usually aren’t hyphenated when they follow a noun.
In the financial world, the following phrases typically use hyphens:
- closed-end fund
- risk-adjusted returns
- sub-advised funds (although there’s a trend to delete the hyphen to use “subadvised”)
- target-date funds
- time-weighted rate of return
- year-to-date period
For more on hyphens, check out these resources:
Note: This post was updated on Feb. 18, 2025. It was originally published in December 2013.
