How to Correctly Use Hyphens in English
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hi everybody welcome back to ask alicia
the weekly series where you
ask me questions and i answer them maybe
okay let’s get to your first question
this week first question this week comes
from miriam atef hi miriam
miriam says what’s the difference
between so
and so that okay sometimes we can use
them
in the same way it’s just a personal
preference decision
so sometimes we use so that to mean
in order to or for the purpose of
for example we need to wake up at 6 00
am
so that we can get to the airport by 9
am
or you should save some money so that
you can take a nice vacation
in these sentences i’ve used so that but
many people
me included use so without that
so the reason for this is that that
isn’t actually necessary we don’t have
to have
that here we can use the word so to
connect these two ideas so
by itself has that same meaning of in
order to
do something so many people choose to
drop
that just to make the sentence more
efficient
so in these cases you can choose to use
either so
or so that but please keep in mind with
the other uses of so
like for emphasis reasons we cannot
replace so
with so that we can only use so by this
i mean
when you want to use so for emphasis of
an adjective
or an adverb for example she sings
so beautifully or this copy is so
good we cannot replace so with so that
in these example sentences when you use
so for emphasis
please use it alone if you want to use
it to mean for the purpose of or
in order to you can use so that so i
hope this helps you understand the
differences between
so and so that thanks very much for the
question okay
let’s move on to your next question next
question comes from
oz aws hello oz oz says the word
congratulations
is used on big occasions what should we
say to a person who
bought new shoes directly from the
seller or another exciting event
yeah in situations that are exciting but
there’s no
accomplishment or there’s no achievement
just use a
positive adjective something like great
or
cool or fantastic or awesome
if you want to talk about a singular
object you can say
that’s cool or that’s great you can also
use this for a situation
don’t use it’s cool or it’s great use
that in this case if you want to talk
about
plural nouns you can use those are
cool or those are great or those are
fantastic as in
like with shoes or maybe with glasses or
something like that
so yes as you said we use
congratulations
for a big occasion some kind of
achievement or special accomplishment or
important life event
for other just exciting things that
happen just use a positive adjective
that you prefer
in my case i probably say that’s cool or
that’s awesome
so i hope that this helps you thanks
very much for the question
okay let’s move on to your next question
next question
comes from aj hi aj aj says hi alicia
what’s the difference between no way and
impossible okay we use no way to respond
to shocking or surprising information
so the key here is it’s a response so
the idea behind no way is like
there is no way this is possible is like
a longer way to say it or
there is no chance that this is possible
so it’s something that’s hard for us to
believe
we’re so surprised or we’re so shocked
so we can use this in both positive
and in negative situations we often use
it in like happy
kind of surprise related situations so
for example
imagine you fly across the world to meet
a friend or a family member to surprise
them
when they see you they might say no way
which means
i’m so surprised right now i can’t
believe
this is possible so it would sound very
strange to say
you’re here impossible we use impossible
for physically not possible situations
for things that are 100 percent
not possible it sounds rather formal and
it sounds like something we would use
in maybe like scientific situations or
something that we would use in like a
rule-based situation so like there are
rules or policies or agreements related
to that thing
we use no way to express our surprise or
our disbelief
in everyday conversations no way can
also mean there’s no method to do
something
for example there’s no way to recover
the files on your broken computer or
there’s no way to reschedule the event
so this use of
no way shares a meaning with impossible
but no way sounds much more casual it’s
a more
friendly everyday word that we use
impossible
has this meaning like there’s no method
of doing something or it is not possible
but it tends to sound more formal and a
bit more
serious when we say there’s no way to
recover the files on your computer
sorry it sounds a little more friendly
and casual then
it’s impossible to recover the files on
your computer that sounds much more
serious and kind of like scary sometimes
so
yes they do mean the same thing but they
have different grammatical structures as
well
you might have noticed i just said
there’s no way to recover the files
if you want to use impossible we would
say it’s
impossible to recover the files so
please note that there are some
differences in terms of the grammatical
structure
of the sentence when we use these
expressions so again
impossible means something that is not
possible to do
but we tend to use it in more serious
situations so for everyday life
situations
you can use no way there’s no way to do
something
or you can use it to express your shock
your disbelief no way
so i hope that this helps you and don’t
use impossible
to respond to somebody unless you want
to sound kind of surprised and very
serious so
i hope this helps you thanks very much
for the question okay
let’s move on to your next question next
question
comes from nazanin hello nazanin
nazanin says hey alicia what is the
difference
between rich and wealthy ah yeah
nice question if you know the famous
comedian chris rock he has a really
famous bit or a really famous joke about
the difference between
rich and wealthy but to explain it
quickly and briefly here
rich has the feeling of someone who very
recently got a lot of money
or they have some money but we’re not
sure it’s going to be sustainable
that which means we’re not sure if they
can continue having lots of money
so it’s like someone who has a lot of
money and they might
not have that money into the future
that’s someone who is
rich when we talk about someone who is
wealthy
we’re talking about someone who has a
history of having
lots of money maybe their family has
lots of money
for many generations their family
members have had lots of money
so it’s a sustainable thing it’s
something that has happened for a long
time a condition that has been true for
a long time
that’s someone who is wealthy so someone
who is rich
we can think of as maybe they have money
for a long time
uh maybe not we don’t know someone who
is wealthy though
they have like this history of lots and
lots of money
in everyday conversation many people use
them in the same way
he’s rich she’s rich he’s wealthy she’s
wealthy but if you want to get into the
specific details this is the difference
between these two words
so i hope that this helps you thanks
very much for the question
okay let’s move on to your next question
next question
comes from pamela hi pamela pamela says
hi alicia thanks for your teaching
i would like to know when do we use the
hyphen in some words
for example in my work i always use the
words non-parametric
or non-hyphen parametric or
socioeconomic or socio-hyphen economic
and more thanks in advance great
question and unfortunately there is no
easy answer the reason that you
sometimes see words with a hyphen
and sometimes without a hyphen is
because there are a few
different english writing guides that
are used by
different publications different
publishers so a publication or a
publisher
is a place that creates written
documents like magazines
they create newspapers they create books
and so on
so depending on the type of work
that is being produced a different
writing guide which is called a style
guide might be used
there are a couple of really really
common and very widely used
english writing guides these are called
style guides
the first is the ap style book which is
the associated press
style book and the second is the chicago
manual of style which is also called
chicago or cms for short so
the ap style book is used in journalism
which means if you read newspapers that
are written in american english
they probably use the ap style book to
make their decisions regarding
punctuation
and other things lots of other things
this includes spelling hyphenation and
so on
if however you’re looking at a novel so
a book or a short story maybe
that kind of writing uses the chicago
manual of style
generally to make things even more
complex
publishers themselves often have
in-house rules
so internal rules rules that they use
inside their company
relating to spelling punctuation and so
on so depending on the place that
publishes something
the spelling or the hyphenation might be
different
so how do we make our decisions how do
we know what we should do
a couple of guidelines number one i
would suggest you first check the
dictionary my favorite
it’s online and free is the
merriam-webster dictionary
check to see the way that the word is
spelled there do they use a hyphen do
they not use a hyphen
second would be to check and see what
the spelling is or what the preferred
style of hyphenation is
for that word in your industry so by
that i mean
check to see what other people are using
when other people write about that topic
what are they using so sometimes this
can help you sometimes
you see a mix of different things the
third thing that you can do
is to consider would having a hyphen or
would not having a hyphen
cause confusion for my reader so a great
example of this
is the word recreation and the word
recreation
so the problem here is that recreation
and
recreation have the exact same spelling
but they have very different meanings so
recreation means to do something for fun
and recreation refers to creating
something again
very different meanings they have the
same spelling
so we need to have a hyphen in
recreation to separate
the re from creation if we don’t have
the hyphen in that word
a reader might mistake the word for
recreation which would cause a
misunderstanding overall
so in these cases it’s really important
to consider hyphenation
if there’s a chance that your reader
might be confused
as in this case you should probably put
a hyphen in the word
so this is the reason you might find
some words with a hyphen and some words
without a hyphen
and this is also hopefully a small guide
for how you can decide
whether to add a hyphen or not i hope
that this helps you thanks for an
interesting question
okay that is everything that i have for
this week thank you as always for
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week bye