Hyphenseparated

Hyphenseparated is an adjective used in typography, linguistics, and computing to describe strings in which two or more elements are joined by hyphens rather than spaces or other separators. This form is common in compound adjectives, product names, file identifiers, and URL-friendly tokens, where the hyphen signals a closer link between components while preserving legibility. Examples include well-known, state-of-the-art, and user-id.

The term is formed from hyphen and separated, and it is often used to distinguish hyphen-linked strings from simply hyphenated words or from underscored or spaced variants. In practice, the phrase hyphen-separated is more commonly written as two words or as hyphenated words themselves in everyday language, but hyphenseparated serves as a concise technical descriptor in glossaries and style guides. In computing, hyphenseparated strings are closely related to kebab-case, a naming convention that uses hyphens to separate words in identifiers and URLs.

Related concepts include hyphenation, hyphenated compounds, and kebab-case. Hyphenseparated design tends to improve readability, ease parsing by machines, and enhance URL and file-name safety relative to spaces. Potential drawbacks include ambiguity in how to hyphenate certain multiword terms and styling conflicts with language-specific hyphenation rules. Overall, hyphenseparated remains a practical descriptor for a specific, hyphen-linked presentation of multiple components.