a hyphenation headache

Just discovered: a lovely article about hyphens and their usage! 

... the most exasperating and tiresome punctuation mark of all — the hyphen.

In general, we use hyphens to avoid ambiguity. Otherwise, how would we be able to tell the difference between a “man-eating shark” and a “man eating shark”? There’s also a big difference between a pickled herring merchant and a pickled-herring merchant. (And we don’t want to go around casting aspersions on herring merchants, as Lynne Truss says.) 

A definitive collection of hyphenation rules does not exist; rather, different style manuals prescribe different usage guidelines. In the American Medical Association Manual of Style — there are 8 pages on the hyphen. These pages include rules for whento use hyphens and when not to use hyphens. 

And hyphenation rules can be exceedingly complicated. Byzantine even.

To read more go to: impertinentremarks.com