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Re: Hyphenation best practices

for

From: Geof Collis
Date: Jan 5, 2010 7:24AM

Hi Mike

I personally have no problem understanding any of your examples.


cheers

Geof
At 09:04 AM 1/5/2010, you wrote:
>I'm interested in some feed back (especially from screen reader
>users) on best practices for hyphenation. Hyphens are sometimes
>used without surrounding spaces to:
>
> 1. combine words into new words: e.g. "blue-collar," "senior-level," etc..
> 2. connect elements in a series: e.g. "Some places are vulnerable
> to earthquakes (San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA)"
> 3. as a form of punctuation (as double hyphens ["--"]) to connect
> different parts of a sentence (as with a comma): e.g. "He entered
> the room -- unaware of the danger."
>
>I'm thinking that screen readers would not be able correctly parse
>these cases, i.e. combining the words in case 1 above, and
>providing a pause in the case 2 and 3.
>
>Is this true?
>Is it a serious problem? Or are screen reader users used to the
>behavior and able to mentally compensate?
>Are there some best practices to suggest to our authors on when to
>uses hyphens without spaces?
>
>-- Mike
>
>