Board certified or Board-certified? (Hyphen Explained)

When you’re using “board-certified” as an adjective, you need to make sure you know of a few rules. This article will help you to understand whether it’s one or two words or whether you simply need the hyphenated version in your writing.

Board certified vs. Board certified

Both “board-certified” and “board certified” are correct. We can use both forms as adjectives to modify nouns. The hyphenated form works when a noun comes directly after the adjective. The unhyphenated form works when a noun comes somewhere before the adjective.

According to Google Ngram Viewer, “board-certified” and “board certified” are almost identical in usage. This shows that both forms are correct, and it depends entirely on where you place the noun that the adjective form is used to modify.

The Oxford Dictionary and The Merriam-Webster Dictionary both define “board-certified” as a hyphenation variation. They mention that it is an adjective and include examples where the noun comes directly after the hyphenated form.

While there is no mention of the unhyphenated variation, we can still use it when the noun comes before the two words. It doesn’t need an official definition because “board” and “certified” are already individually defined.

Here are some examples to help you understand how noun placement works.

• Noun before: You will need to find a person who is board certified if you want to find a good answer.
• Noun after: I’m not a board-certified employee, but I still know a lot about what’s going on.

Board certified

“Board certified” does not have to be hyphenated when it is used as an adjective, but the noun comes before it. There are no rules in English that mean we need to hyphenate multiple-word adjectives if the noun has already come before them, which is why it’s appropriate here.

You might notice from the graph above that it’s just as common for nouns to come before as it is to come after. Therefore, you’re just as likely to see the hyphenated form as you are to see the unhyphenated one.

It’s just one of those funny things in English. Once you know where the noun is, you’ll know whether the hyphens are needed.

Check out some of these examples to help you:

1. I would like to talk to somebody who is board certified. Then I can trust their judgment more.
2. If you’re not board certified, I don’t want to talk to you about this.
3. Can you talk to whoever is board certified to find out whether there is anything worth doing about this?
4. You are not going to get board certified. Please stop trying to because it’s getting very exhausting!

Board-certified

“Board-certified” works as a hyphenated form when we are using it as an adjective. In this form, we must make sure to include the noun directly after “board-certified” to show how the two words link together to modify the individual noun that comes after.

We can refer to AP Style when we want to learn about hyphenation. According to the AP Stylebook, hyphens should link multiple words when they work to modify the same noun.

Therefore, saying something like “board-certified directors” will require a hyphen. “Directors” is a noun, while “board” and “certified” both work to modify the meaning of it.

These examples will explain more about the adjective form:

1. I would like to speak to some board-certified directors about this situation if that’s okay.
2. Can we get some board-certified members in here to talk about this pronto?
3. I have not seen the board-certified committee for a while, and I’m wondering whether they’ve decided to kick me out.
4. Have you got the board-certified procedures in place now? We need to make sure everyone understands them.

Is “Certified” Capitalized In The Word “Board-Certified”?

“Board-certified” does not need either portion of the word to be capitalized. It is not a proper noun, which means that it does not rely on capitals when presented in a sentence.

However, you might find it useful to capitalize both parts of the word when you are writing it as part of a title. If you capitalize every word in your title, then it would make more sense to write “Board-Certified” to keep it uniform with the rest of your writing.