[corroonb]

I didn't quite know where to put this question or how to title the thread but I'll ask here anyway.

Does anyone know if it's possible (or common) for small corrections to be made to an author's work without that author's knowledge or consent? I don't mean spelling or grammar correction but stylistic elements that may be changed in accordance to usage between generations.

What I'm particularly interested in here is in the hyphenation of compound words. I've seen some ebooks (not of terrible quality either) where a lot of the hyphens have been stripped from the text as I discovered when checking these compound words in Google Books. I myself am not a fan of hyphenated compound words but I'd like the text to be as accurate as possible. This is probably a formatting error but I'd like to be sure.

I've seen that some British writers have works in American English which I always find strange.