Which sentence contains an unnecessary hyphen? A) francis used one-third cup of sugar to sweeten the beverage. b) jaylen, like m
ost teens, did not want to clean-up his bedroom. c) as a father's day gift, sybil re-covered her dad's favorite chair. d) he is willing to re-sign his contract if he receives a signing bonus.
The sentence that contains an unnecessary hyphen is option B) “jaylen, like most teens, did not want to clean-up his bedroom.” In this case, a hyphen should not be use with phrasal verbs such as “clean up”.
Hyphens are commonly used to link words, especially in compound word, with prefixes and word breaks. In option A, we find an example of compound adjective (one-third cup), in option D we find example of prefixes as in “re-sign” and in option C we find an example of word break as in “re-covered”.
So the only sentence that contains an unnecessary hyphen is option B.
