Death to the Hyphen

[news.yahoo.com]

Hey Dov, Oxford called...

NOOOOOOOO!

This is now probably going to make my dealings with credit and governmental agencies even worse than they have been. These agencies can easily hyphenate surnames, but not given names.

Oh well. Mom and Dad opted to give me a hyphen rather than an middle name, or even a middle initial.

Rita
a.k.a Rita-Ann or Ritaann

He
"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."

Don't you mean 'designled'?

Not to belabor this because I only posted it for the stupid joke factor, but:

1. Despite aforementioned stupid joke, the article says nothing about removing hyphens from names, so Rita-Ann is safe.

2. While it is funny that a lot of the remarks in the article are peppered with hyphens, design-led is a completely different use of the thing than bumble-bee. They're talking about spelling self-contained words, not modifying adjectives.

What about waterborne? Being that it's the kind of compound adjective they're trying to retain, I find dropping the hyphen to be a particularly bad choice there. Why bow to the dumb-asses that don't know what the past participle of to bear is? I'd also prefer waterbed and potbelly, but the latter is most likely due to my rampant consumerism.

Most of the words where OED dropped hyphens either for spaces or to close up the two words, we've been doing it for a long time and OED is trailing conventional usage. When was the last time anyone spelled it "ice-cream"? Sounds like a 50-year-old British novel.

And the story notes hyphens are still important in places, making the example of "20-odd people walked into the party" vs. "20 odd people walked into the party." (Memo to self: Be good in 2007-08. No Rich S jokes here. He is probably a nice man in person.)

billhoward
Most of the words where OED dropped hyphens either for spaces or to close up the two words, we've been doing it for a long time and OED is trailing conventional usage. When was the last time anyone spelled it "ice-cream"? Sounds like a 50-year-old British novel.

I spell it "iced cream" because I'm an 1890s dandy/fop.

*waits for a beatdown*

RichH

billhoward
Most of the words where OED dropped hyphens either for spaces or to close up the two words, we've been doing it for a long time and OED is trailing conventional usage. When was the last time anyone spelled it "ice-cream"? Sounds like a 50-year-old British novel.

I spell it "iced cream" because I'm an 1890s dandy/fop.

*waits for a beatdown*

Robb is happy to oblige, and beats RichH into silence with a goalie stick.

RichH

I spell it "iced cream" because I'm an 1890s dandy/fop.

*waits for a beatdown*[/quote]I suppose you like to eat it while you watch the New York Highlanders play a game of base?

The publication I work for generally avoids hyphens in its style guide. But our most recent version actually added one: "small and midsized businesses" is now "small and medium-sized businesses."

[end useless addition to conversation]