Hyphenation is a real problem for writers. There are so many rules, and sometimes no consistency to them. The best advice I can give you is to get a CD of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition, and download it onto your computer. I use it all the time, every day, as it is the accepted authority in book publishing. (Note: The CD is included in the paperback book in the back, so this way you will have the book as a reference too.)
The Chicago Manual of Style takes precedence over M-W, though, so I encourage you to download this CMOS Hyphenation Chart from CMOS 16th Edition, print it out, and refer to it whenever you are unsure whether a word should be hyphenated or not. Often CMOS will refer you to check M-W for their take on a particular word, so you need both tools. With both of these resources at your fingertips, you will be able to go through your book and clean it up. Remember—your spell-checker will steer you wrong a lot! It will often tag some words as not being in the dictionary when they are correct, and it will sometimes let a misspelling slip through, so use your spell-checker judiciously!
This is an awesome find–thanks for sharing it! I’ll put this one on my @WriterThesaurus feed, too!
Angela
What a great resource! Thanks! 🙂
Wow…this will come in handy:) Thanks so much Susanne!
Great resource to use, thanks.
Great share. Thanks so much.
Thank you for the handy link! I tend to use the MLA stylebook, but I’m quite sure that hyphenation is relatively standardized across styles. It’s so helpful to have these reminders on such pesky, but important, details.
Actually, Pamela, CMOS is quite different in so many ways from other style, and especially with punctuation, so it’s good to refer to this if you are writing a book. A college paper with MLA format will have some different styles, so be sure to check this over when working on a book.
I am reading Say What? and find it to be a most helpful book that discusses many common grammar errors. Thank you C.S. Lakin for writing it. Nancy Ann Caldwell
You’re welcome!