Had. See have.
Hang, hung, hung. An irregular verb meaning to suspend something, in its main, past tense, and past participle forms. Note that “hanged” is the regular past tense and past participle of the verb “to hang” that means to execute by hanging.
Hanged, hung. Commonly confused past tense forms of the verb “hang,” these words refer, respectively, to executions (“The traitor was hanged.”) and any other form of hanging things or people (“The curator hung by a thread of suspense while the priceless painting was hung by the klutzy assistant.”).
Have, had, had. An irregular verb in its main, past tense, and past participle forms.
Have, of. Do not use “of” to complete a compound verb. WRONG: “I could of come.” RIGHT: “I could have come.” Acceptable or undetectable in speech, the use of “of” with verbs is simply an obvious error in all writing but fiction or linguistic reporting.
He, him, his. The personal pronoun “he” has an objective case form of “him” and a possessive case form of “his.” See also case.
Hear, heard, heard. An irregular verb in its main, past tense, and past participle forms.
Heard. See hear.
He’d. This contraction of “he had” and “he would” should not normally be used in standard English writing.
Helping verb. See auxiliary.
Her. See she.
Her/him. See she/he.
Hers. See she.
Herself. See -self.
He’s. This contraction of “he is” and “he has” should rarely, if ever, be used in standard English writing.
He/she, him/her. Rewrite this awkward concession to gender equality into more easily digested forms like “he and she” or “they.” See sexist language.
Hid. See hide.
Hidden. See hide.
Hide, hid, hidden. An irregular verb in its main, past tense, and past participle forms.
Him. See he.
Him/her. See he/she.
Himself. See-self.
His. See he.
Hit, hit, hit. An irregular verb in its main, past tense, and past participle forms.
Homonym. Homonyms are words that sound alike and therefore are easily confused with each other and hard to spell: “Write the rite right.” The example is silly but makes the point that spelling mimics the sound patterns of English in different, sometimes strange and unpredictable, ways. The writer can only try to remember all the words that exist in homonym pairs or sets and check whether the correct one appears in any sentence. If you don’t know that there are several words that sound like “rain,” you might well choose the wrong one when you are talking about royalty or carriages. The only thing to do is look up “rain” in a dictionary and see if it is used for a monarch’s “reign” or the “reins” that control horses. Obviously it isn’t, and most dictionaries will list the homonyms.
The most commonly confused homonyms and similar words appear in entries throughout this book and are cross-referenced for all similar or homonymous forms. You can thus find “their” “there,” and “they’re.”
Hopefully. It seems the struggle to help people use this word correctly has all but ended in defeat. The word is improperly used at the beginning of a sentence (or anywhere else) to mean “it is hoped.” WRONG: “Hopefully, I will win the lottery and get rich.” This sentence actually means, I, full of hope, will win the lottery and get rich. However, almost everyone makes the “wrong” sort of statement on the assumption that it means, I hope I will win…. “Hopefully” is used properly as follows: “The student looked hopefully to the professor as a font of wisdom.”
Don’t use “hopefully” in the wrong way in formal, school, or academic writing, even though it is now appearing even there without comment or censure.
However. “However,” is used in many ways: as an interjection (“The experts don’t, however, agree with you.”); as an indefinite adverb (“However you do it is okay with me.”); and as a conjunctive adverb (“Jan wants to go; however, Chris doesn’t.”). See also adverb.
Hr. Use the abbreviation for “hour” (hr.) only in tables, scientific writing, or other special circumstances. In most cases, hr. should be spelled out as “hour.” See scientific language.
Hung. See hang and hanged.
Hyphen. The hyphen punctuation mark (-) is used to join words to some prefixes, to indicate where simple words were joined but are now divided at the end of a printed or typed line, or to link together compound words.
In modern usage most prefixes are spelled solid (closed up) with words: “Antiwar protestors were arrested at the rally.” But in some cases hyphens are mandatory: before capitalized words or before numerals: “Pre-Prohibition wines include the post-1918 vintages.” When a prefix spelled solid with a word is confusing, a hyphen can be inserted to clarify and is sometimes required: “Re-creating recreational settings is refreshing.” See capitalization and numbers.
When words don’t fit onto the lines of paper, they are sometimes “broken” into pieces placed at the end of one line and the beginning of the next (as in many lines in this book). A hyphen is placed at the end of the last fragment of the word at the end of a line to indicate that the rest of the word is at the beginning of the next line. Words are broken only at the ends of syllables or where hyphens naturally occur in them. If possible, it is best to avoid introducing a line-ending hyphen into a word or string of words that already has one or more hyphens in it. One-syllable words are not divided over lines, nor are words with single-letter syllables at their beginning or end broken at those points (for example, don’t break “wordy” and leave a hanging “y” at the beginning of a line).
Although some compound words are formed without a hyphen, most include it: “That is a decision-making factor.” Compounds with hyphens include fractions, spelled-out numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine, and specially concocted strings of words: “One-seventh of the one hundred and thirty-five gurus believed in life-after-death manifestations.”