Saturday, October 5, 2019

orthography - Hyphens in words with prefixes like neo-Nazism

I have a question regarding the use of hyphens in words with certain prefixes. For example,





Neo-Nazism
Neo-Confucianism
Neo-liberal




are words with a hyphen, but




Neoplatonism
Neocolonialism




are words without hyphens. I'm especially confused with neo-Confucianism and neoplatonism: one contains a hyphen and a capital letter and the other doesn't.




Is there a specific rule for hyphens in words with prefixes or is it purely arbitrary?

No comments:

Post a Comment