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Re: Hyphenation best practices

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From: Randi
Date: Jan 5, 2010 8:09AM

With voiceover, I have it set not to read punctuation, so I never know
what is being used. With the examples of using hyphens in a sentence,
I hear the smallest of pauses, which helps break things up, but I
can't tell if it's a hyphen or a comma. The same is true with
parenthesis. I've become accustomed to those little pauses and what
they mean. In the case of blue-collar versus blue - collar, there is
also the slightest difference, but the blue - collar with spaces
sounds kinda silly, because Alex really slows down to read it versus
blue-collar with no spaces. I'm really not sure how much of a
difference it might make, and if I'm reading a paragraph, I'm not
going to pay attention to those subtle differences. There have been
times when I've gone in to interact with a sentence to see what
punctuation is there, but it's rare. Don't know if that helps answer
your question.

~Randi

http://raynaadi.blogspot.com/

On Jan 5, 2010, at 7:04 AM, Langum, Michael J 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
>
>