Firecracker George (and 115-CLF, if he ever reads this blog) may recall "Dash Day" from our senior year of high school, an annual celebration of sorts dedicated to the use of the dash instead of the semicolon which also served as a blatant excuse to bring food to class and to wear homemade t-shirts with such mottos as "Down with the Semicolon." In fact, I've taken to using the dash rather liberally in my writings, much in part to the teachings of our coolest English teacher from years past.
Alas, another dash of sorts is going the way of the dodo bird. The hyphen, used to link two words like bumble-bee or cry-baby, was dropped in a new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.
If you want to drive my wife crazy, you can drop the hyphen in her name, too, all in the name of efficiency and aesthetics. As the editor of the Dictionary says:
"Printed writing is very much design-led these days in adverts and Web sites, and people feel that hyphens mess up the look of a nice bit of typography," he said. "The hyphen is seen as messy looking and old-fashioned."
I chuckled at the fact that the author of that story chose to throw a couple of hyphens in when quoting the guy who hates them. And try calling my wife old-fashioned when she uses that hyphen to spell her name--she's liable to give you a sock in the mouth (or at least a mean glare).
1 comment:
As long as people can't remember if crybaby - and words like it - are one word or two, we will have the hyphen. Considering that our overall mastery of English is declining, I don't see that happening.
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