Correct Hyphenation Is Within Your Reach!

I don’t know whether this ever happened to you. Even as a long-time blogger about better communication, hyphenaton has sometimes stumped me.

I know what it is like to write under daily pressure. I wrote a blog post daily for 600 days after I launched KirkMahoney.com on 17 October 2007.

I have another confession. I do not have time for random searches about hyphenation rules, and I suspect that you do not have the time either.

But, here is the kicker: There were no good books just about hyphenation rules!

Oh, sure. There are books about punctuation that include a brief discussion about hyphens and hyphenation.

But, nobody had bothered to create a complete book about hyphens and hyphenation mistakes until I wrote How to Use Hyphens.

I wrote it for people like you and me.

I wrote it because I wanted this information all in one place for my own reference. It can help you, too.

How to Use Hyphens gives you everything that you need — all in one place. You need not look for hyphenation advice scattered in millions of places across the Web.

This is not your grandfather’s punctuation book! Instead, it is a fun, easy-to-read book that is full of mistakes.

Oops, that did not come out right!

What I mean is: How to Use Hyphens uses mistakes to teach hyphenation rules.

This book is not a sophisticated treatise on the linguistic nature of hyphenation.

Instead, How to Use Hyphens is a practical, down-to-earth guide to common mistakes made with hyphens.

This book answers your hyphenation questions faster than almost any Web search could. (Who wants to spend time digging for help?)

Isn’t working faster what you want?

I much prefer to sit by my pool than to be stuck in my home office. Even if I am writing while sitting by the pool — which is not a bad way to work! — I do not want to waste time at my laptop that I can spend in the pool.

What do you want from a book like this? Wouldn’t you say that your ultimate goals are mistake-free hyphenation and more free time?

You might be wondering whether this is a serious book. In a sense, it is. I am serious about everything that I write, and I put a lot of work into this book.

I mean, you do not earn a Ph.D. — no matter the field — without approaching what you write in a serious way.

I refused, though, to write a pedantic tome about hyphenation.

Instead, I wrote How to Use Hyphens in the same style that I have written my blog posts at KirkMahoney.com. The books has a thoroughness balanced by simplicity and lightheartedness.

May I tell you a secret? I had no idea that I would identify twenty-one hyphenation rules when I began my research.

I expected to find maybe seven or eight common mistakes, so my initial plan was to write a long article for my website.

But, the list of common mistakes kept growing!

First, I had to make sure that I had identified all common mistakes that people make with hyphens. Next, I had to reorganize the mistakes into a sequence that would make sense to people like you and me.

I astounded my wife, an English-language buff, when I told her that I had identified twenty-one rules.

“List Man” is my wife’s pet name for me, so I was confident in my research. So, I knew that I had written a book that covered the bases. With twenty-one of them, that makes for an unusual baseball diamond!

You now have an opportunity to enjoy all my hard work at a price that might make even a shoplifter blush.

But, let me ask you some questions:

1. If you were desperate for someone’s telephone number, would you care whether you got it on an oil-stained napkin?
2. If you need actionable information, do you have time to sift through fluff just so that you feel that you are getting a good deal?
3. How practical is it to lug around yet another heavy book?

I formatted How to Use Hyphens in a clean but simple fashion. My focus was on the content and presenting the content in an easy-to-access format.

I am not saying that How to Use Hyphens is a bare-bones book, either. To the contrary! I made sure that I included more than one example for each of the twenty-one rules. But, I did not pad it with fluff just to make the book look bigger.

I am not saying that there is not a place for physical books. Like many of my blog readers, I love physical books. If you prefer How to Use Hyphens in paperback form, then you can get it. If you prefer it in ebook form, then you can get it. Got it?

If you have traveled as much as I have, then you know the pain of lugging heavy books in your carry-on luggage. You also know the pain of having to decide what to take and what to jettison. (Don’t you just love those luggage-weight fees from the airlines?)

You need a book “that just works!” — and that is what I have created with How to Use Hyphens.

Get It Now

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