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I am writing my Ph.D. Thesis in US English and have two questions on hyphenating.

  1. Would it be re-entry or reentry?
  2. Would it be (re)training or (re-)training? Or would it be retraining at all times? In my study, people might get retraining but not always. Therefore, I sometimes use parentheses.

Is there a general rule (in US English) for using these hyphenations?

Thank you all in advance.

Cheers,

Roy

Roy Peijen
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1 Answers1

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Write these without the hyphen.

The venerable Chicago Manual of Style (13th ed) has this entry in Table 6-1 for the re- :

  • reedit, reunify, redigitalize, reexamine

At the top of the table, chief exceptions are listed. The last of these exceptions is:

A few compounds in which the last letter of the prefix is the same as the first letter of the word following.

Concerning the same last letter of the prefix and first letter following, the table says:

Newly-invented compounds of the last type tend to be treated in hyphenated style when they first appear and then to be closed up when they have become more familiar.... In addition to familiarity, appearance also influences the retention of hyphens, and it is never wrong to keep a hyphen so as to avoid misleading or puzzling forms (e.g., non-native, aniti-intellectual).

rajah9
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  • Thanks rajah9 this helped a lot. – Roy Peijen Aug 18 '20 at 11:35
  • Please check for easy-to-find duplicates. Avoid bloat. (An in-house search for [hyphenation reedit] {an obvious peculiarity anong re-words)} shows the duplicate (and I suspect there are quite a few others). – Edwin Ashworth Aug 18 '20 at 11:49
  • You're welcome! And if your university has a style guide for theses or dissertations, I'd recommend you go with it rather than CMoS. Oh, and if there are separate guidelines, such as 1.75" margins left and right, follow those precisely. – rajah9 Aug 18 '20 at 11:50
  • @EdwinAshworth, Your referenced Q/A was for UK English, not US. I have provided a US reference. – rajah9 Aug 18 '20 at 12:02
  • The accepted answer focuses on the CMoS (15th edition) guidance. – Edwin Ashworth Aug 18 '20 at 13:29