by Jennie Ruby
My son and daughter got into one of their little "discussions" over the holidays about the words resign and re-sign.
He insisted that the two words were spelled exactly the same way.
She said that when you mean "to sign again," you hyphenate the word.
I usually try to stay out of the middle of these things, and the dictionary allows me to step aside and let a disinterested party resolve the issue. She is right: re-sign means to sign again; resign means to leave a job.
The need to hyphenate certain words to avoid complete ambiguity occurs every now and then. Usually, a prefix is involved.
Here are some other examples:
- re-cover vs. recover
- re-creation vs. recreation
- un-ionize vs. unionize
Keep an eye out for these odd little exceptions!
About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Essentials of Access 2000" and "Editing with MS Word 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 7" to her credit. Jennie specializes in electronic editing. At the American Psychological Association, she was manager of electronic publishing and manager of technical editing and journal production. Jennie has an M.A. from George Washington University and is a Certified Technical Trainer (Chauncey Group). She is a publishing professional with 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.
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