English Words Missing Hyphens
Reuters reported on a linguistic catastrophe -- Thousands of hyphens perish as English marches on. Seems that a new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary eliminated hyphens in about 16,000 words. Reuter's Simon Rabinovich blames it on the Internet. Here's what the Shorter OED editor offered: "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." The shorter dictionary (only two volumes!) unified compound nouns or split them into two words. Decisions weren't whimsical and arbitrary, but based on research into contemporary use, the ed said.Labels: English, words, writing
posted by Georganna Hancock M.S. | 6:43 AM
4 Comments:
As always Georganne, you're giving me news I can use. My many years of Catholic education, including Latin and Greek have long fed my delusion that I'm adept enough at English word form, usage, and sentence structure. In college I even took a semester of Olde Middle English, where the letter "s: appear as "f" in "Canterbury Tales." But somehow I get my hyphenation wrong more often than right. "The New Shorter Oxford/English Dictionary" sounds like just what I need.
I have no idea what to do about these changes, Kathleen. I can't afford to buy another dictionary just to keep up with hyphens!
Ah, "Whan in fring ..." Loved that old/middle English.
Not again! I suppose the 16th edition of Chicago Style will soon appear as a result of these changes.
As for me, I'll probably get in trouble with some client who wants me to not hyphen when I am hyphen-prone.
There is something about a hyphenated word that provides a better way to emphasize what is being conveyed than what two words can alone provide.
Soon, we'll be writing/speaking computereze. Computerish?
Chicago, Matthew? What about the AP? I'm wondering if we Yanks have to worry about it anyway because this is a UK pub and we all know they speak weird English and have very different ideas about punctuation--just see Eats, Shoots and Leaves!
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