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Fri 12 Oct, 2007 07:49 pm
Bye-bye (or is it byebye?) to 16,000 silly hyphens
Quote: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).
Quote:As the Oxford University Press style guide once said, If you take hyphens seriously, you will surely go mad. (Or should that be styleguide?)
I like hyphenated words. This is going to take some getting used to.
I like hyphens, talk in them, except when I let them be, as lambent hyphens.
Trust me, I don't care about this or that ruling.
She says, hyphenating, needing oxygen...
Me too, I often add a hyphen where it is not needed...for flow...sometimes they just look better...but I often leave them out as well, because I'm not sure.
Reread just does not work for me....re-read.
We might understand each other, however we splay on sides of fence on occasion.
I think I'm the only one who just posts semicolons as part of natural talk.
Colons seem to be impossibles.
So it goes.
Coworkers or co-workers? I favour the latter.
And I like ;s and :s...
I do seem to be the queen of dots, which I need to get over........
Well, I do sometimes, er, some times, use words as one, instead of hyphenating, but I still like hyphenating in some instances, or, just leaving a space.
I don't give a peach pit what a dictionary will newly say, although I gather it will affect dictionary users in the furture.
From my cold, dead paws....
I have a simple rule of thumb now for hyphens, which is the product of the arrival of the personal computer. If i type a word, such as horseshit, and the spellcheck function identifies it as a misspelling, then i put in a hyphen--so i don't have to deal with horse-shit from the spell-checker.
Dammit, does this mean I have to change my name again?
Which has it been until now?
Jes-pah?
Or
Jesp-ah?
Jespah Snootthorpe-Philbis.
Ah. I see. Well, with a name like that I doubt the hyphen had really been noticed by too many.
What are we gonna do about yoong liat? The lessons will have to start all over again.
Since when was the Oxford Shorter English Dictionary the arbiter of the English language?
ossobuco wrote:I do seem to be the queen of dots, which I need to get over........
I thought I was......the queen of dots.....
I like dots.....a lot.
It's more than a comma....it implies ponderment.
Or timing the punchline.
I agree, of course, Chai: that is, about the pondering element.
Colon! Colon! Colon alert!
In the alt.usage.english newsgroup, "co-worker" once slid into cult status as "how to ork a cow", "cow-orker" as occupational title, and suchlike jocular riffs.
***
In the first half of the 1900s, the words "to-day" and "to-night" were often shown with hyphens. Much more recently, "co-operate" was commonplace for those eschewing the dieresis.
***
The trend of separate words gliding into conjoined status via hyphens and finally uniting in one two-part word may be a reflection of what happened to Earth in its early formation. Those who truly care about that earthly event sometimes sport a bumper-snicker: "Reunite Pangaea!"
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