Grammar expert and enthusiast June Casagrande dives into the world of hyphens and how to actually use them in writing.

Hyphens, tiny punctuation that they are, have recently created an outsize uproar among those using The Associated Press Stylebook, as AP first loosened its rules on hyphens in compound modifiers ...

The basic rules for hyphenation deal with hyphenating compound modifiers, not just compounds. A compound modifier is two or more words working like an adjective to modify another word, usually a noun.

Apparently, the long-standing practice of inserting a hyphen in a compound modifier was re-examined and deemed unnecessary if the modifier is “commonly recognized as one phrase, and if the ...

Now, this doesn't mean that every compound modifier needs a hyphen — they're needed only when a phrase could be read more than one way.

In this way, both "poets laureate" and "poet laureates" are acceptable. For compounds that consist of two nouns separated by a preposition and a modifier, plurals are formed in various ways.

Other modifier pileups might or might not take hyphens, depending on whether they are compounds or just two modifiers. “The large green box” takes no hyphens, because both “large” and “green” refer to ...