Hyphens

Use hyphens consistently and intentionally to maintain clarity in technical content. Hyphens help prevent ambiguity in compound modifiers, ranges, and technical descriptions.

This page provides detailed guidance on hyphen usage. For general punctuation rules, see the Punctuation style guide.

General Principles

When using hyphens:

• Use a simple hyphen (-) for compound modifiers and ranges.
• Do not use en dashes (–) or em dashes (—) in place of hyphens.
• Do not add spaces around hyphens in numeric or textual ranges.

Compound Modifiers

Use hyphens in compound adjectives that appear before a noun to avoid ambiguity. For example, “The file has DigitalOcean-specific syntax.”

Do not hyphenate compound adjectives when they appear after the noun, unless doing so improves clarity. If the sentence becomes awkward or unclear, rewrite it for precision instead. For example, avoid “The cluster is multi node.” and instead, write “The cluster uses multiple nodes.”

Do not hyphenate compound modifiers that include an -ly adverb. For example, “The automatically provisioned server includes an active firewall.”

Suspended Hyphens

Use suspended hyphens to reduce repetition when multiple compound modifiers share the same base word. For example, “Expect low- or medium-availability configurations.”

Ranges

Use a hyphen (-) for numeric and textual ranges. For example, “Upload 2-10 files at once.”

Do not add spaces around hyphens in ranges. For example, avoid “202 - 204” or “10 - 20 minutes.”