Let’s look at hyphens and an example of a hyphen that was inserted that changed the meaning in a published book. One of the points I always emphasize is that we must exercise caution before inserting hyphens.

An area where this can become especially problematic involves compound adjectives that end with “like.”

When you add “like” after a noun, you are changing the noun into a compound adjective, and compound adjectives generally take hyphens. It can get tricky though, because there are plenty for which no hyphen is needed (over 2000 from what I have seen). We see this in the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary.

Let’s look at the third definition of “like”:

like 

adjective

3 :  of the kind befitting or characteristic of — used postpositively in combination:

‘ladylike behavior’ 

‘lawyerlike argumentation’

∎

When you come across what appears to be a pair of words including a noun followed by “like,” the smartest way to determine whether a hyphen is needed is to your preferred dictionary without a hyphen: If it is listed, then a hyphen is not needed. Here, again from M-W, we see the listing for “ladylike”:

ladylike 

adjective

1 :  resembling a lady in appearance or manners :  well-bred 

‘editorials urging our girls to be ladylike — Virgil Henry’

∎

Where you must be really careful is whenever you come across “like”: you must not automatically assume that it’s forming a compound adjective with the preceding noun.

Below is an edited version of a sentence I spotted while reading. The paragraph was discussing a group of people traveling, who were in a very busy tourist district such as the one pictured above.

Half an hour later, after the chaos has subsided to a normal level and the crowd has dispersed itself through the streets-like particles in solution, the group arrives.

I had to read this sentence twice to figure out what was going on: as printed it makes no sense. What I believe was intended was this:

Half an hour later, after the chaos has subsided to a normal level and the crowd has dispersed itself through the streets like particles in solution, the group arrives.

The problem is the inclusion of the hyphen after “streets”: “particles” cannot be said to be “like streets.” All that the author meant was that the tour group “dispersed itself” the way particles would in solution. (Think of pouring a powder into a glass of water.) I suspect that the copy editor (or possibly an AI tool) saw “like” and automatically inserted the hyphen.

This is the kind of robotic editing we must always avoid. This is also an area where too much reliance on AI can get you in trouble. As authors or editors we must always read every word and ensure that any changes that have been made actually make sense.

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