October 11, 2007
Bye-bye (or is it byebye?) to 16,000 silly hyphens
Russell Smith in the Globe and Mail:
Different journals or institutions use different style guides, so it is pointless to try to stick to one. There is a person at each institution called a copy editor whose job it is to have this guide by his or her side and to change each writer's texts so that they conform to the rules. So I don't have to worry about them. It's like picking a typeface or a point size. Not my job.
And now I – and you, and all the copy editors – have to worry about these vagaries even less. That's because the new edition of The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary has done away with about 16,000 hyphens. The editors of the dictionary have decided, in an awesome display of ruthless language modification, that the conventions of hyphenation were arbitrary and needed simplification. They changed most of the hyphenated words – such as leap-frog and ice-cream – by turning them into one word (leapfrog) or two distinct words (ice cream).
There are many reasons for this, one of them being that the rules of hyphenation were just silly.
More here.
Posted by Abbas Raza at 06:10 PM | Permalink
Comments
I note in posting my comment that for the space calling for an email address "email" is not "e-mail." And I have for some time now simply used "email" because it is both easier and inevitable. Thank the good lord I have no English teachers around to put me in a time out corner, or is it "time-out corner"?
Posted by: fred lapides | Oct 11, 2007 8:33:34 PM
Now hyphen prices will drastically plummet!
Posted by: beajerry | Oct 12, 2007 4:04:24 AM
As an editor, this pleases me greatly. Down with the tyranny of hyphens! All hail compound words!
Posted by: Stefany | Oct 12, 2007 10:44:02 AM
I am waiting for the day when my language (Gujarati) will say 'byebye' to dirty hyphens.
Posted by: Kartik Mistry | Oct 13, 2007 2:59:11 AM
Hey, I'm hyphen-centric----
Like- "Religions developed as defences against the virus of chance. Prayer had so often proved a false hope, destroying rationality. When the Romans left these shores, the inhabitants killed off all cats, suspecting them to be companions of witches. Rats multiplied. Rats brought in the Black Death. Thousands died. Thousands prayed. Cats did not return."---
Or---
--Yes-the households that had cats were less likely to be hit by plague, therefore they must be witches protected by Satan, and must be killed. Other households which did contract the disease must have done something evil, thereby drawing down God's punishment. Only the ones who had neither cats nor buboes were Godly-people; you could tell, because they survived the plague without the aid of Satan and his cats.
The really scary part is that there are people here in America who still think like that. Some of them live in my neighborhood.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Oct 13, 2007 2:35:23 PM
Dave, take a holiday. You're getting religion-obsessed. This is one of those rare non-Dawkins-related posts. Far better to be cool-minded and have a go-with-the-flow mind-frame.
A high-tech employee is someone who works in High Tech. However, a high tech employee is probably smoking pot at the office.
Posted by: aguy109 | Oct 14, 2007 5:38:30 AM
"a high tech employee is probably smoking pot at the office."
aguy, I think your analysis is spot-on.
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Oct 14, 2007 9:43:38 AM
aguy---
You are right, of course----
I occasionally do both high-tech and high tech. But business tech bores me these days- I have taken to selling art and fashion.
Living with a artist helps.
besides, religious belief is inconsistent with reason and corrosive to the human mind - and I don't want to live in a world where it is respected.
So-let's talk about hyphens- I do use them frequently.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Oct 14, 2007 11:57:57 PM
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