Where have all the hyphens gone?
“One must regard the hyphen as a blemish to be avoided whenever possible.” — Sir Winston Churchill
It’s probably safe to say that hyphens are the Rodney Dangerfield of the punctuation family — they don’t get any respect, as rules for their usage have devolved into guidelines. So what happened?
“Hyphens,” reported the Sydney Morning Herald, “are the latest casualty of the internet age.” Every time we send a quick email (or is it “e-mail”?) or a hasty text on our smartphones (or is it “smart-phones”?) without bothering to use a hyphen where it’s called for, we add another tiny nail to its coffin.
Gone forever are the days that John Keats would be able to write, “To-day thou wilt not see him, nor to-morrow.”
When the hyphen is left out, we’re left wondering whether “my little used Chevy S10” is a small, older truck or one that’s only driven occasionally. But you’d know for sure that it’s the latter if I told you about “my little-used S10 (or is it “S-10”; not even Chevrolet seemed to know for sure).
The final nail in the little line’s coffin probably came a few years ago when the 6th edition of “The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary” (yes, that’s a real thing) removed the hyphens from 16,000 of its compound words. What was left was a mix of “open” words, such as “snow tire” and “fire hose” and “closed” ones, including “snowman” and “fireplace.”
Recently even the Associated Press has been eschewing the hyphen in many of its stories, preferring instead to go with longer closed words. Recent news reports have told us about everything from “realworld history” to a “militarystyle attack.”
In spite of all their pitfalls — or maybe because of them — I decided to try my best to explain the myriad rules of hyphenation to my German friend, Claus. “First of all,” I told him, “‘hyphen’ is from the Greek meaning ‘together,’ and back in the days of typewriters, it was used to break up long words at the ends of lines of type.” He nodded.
“Always use a hyphen after ‘self’ in compound words, like ‘self-doubt,'” I instructed, “but never after an adverb ending in ‘ly.’ And don’t confuse the hyphen with the dash, which can connect or separate.”
“You’re dashing my hopes of ever learning better English. I have mounting self-doubt,” he mumbled.
“Be sure to hyphenate ‘Mexican-American,'” I continued, “but not ‘Latin American,’ and. . . . Claus, where are you going?”
Just before the door slammed behind him, I heard him mutter something in German that may or may not have included a hyphen, but definitely ended with an exclamation point.
Maybe it’s best to heed the advice John Benbow gives in his book “Manuscript and Proof,” and not worry about the hyphen at all. “If you take the hyphen seriously,” he writes, “you will surely go mad.” I’ll give Claus a little time to cool off.
Benbow makes a good point. Best not to think about the hyphen too hard . . . though it does come in handy for clarity.
On the one hand Frank McCourt said, “It’s not enough to be American. You always have to be something else, Irish-American, German-American, and you’d wonder how they’d get along if someone hadn’t invented the hyphen.”
On the other hand, President Woodrow Wilson once called the hyphen “the most un-American thing in the world.”
Jim Witherell of Lewiston is a writer and lover of words whose work includes “L.L. Bean: The Man and His Company” and “Ed Muskie: Made in Maine.”
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