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