The horrible-hyphen-disease    058

As parents we all love our children. So we need to know about the hyphen epidemic—the mindless moronic over use of this important punctuation device—which surprisingly places our children at risk of developing hypertension, sleep apnoea, psychological disorders, social problems, and certainly the condition of writing even worse English than they are probably writing now. The disease has existed since the advent of mass modern education but has now reached epidemic proportions in the 21st century largely because of the use of the computer for writing.

Let’s examine the state of the disease at the time when most baby boomers would be either teenagers or young adults. The 1966 edition of Fowler’s A Dictionary of Modern English Usage devotes some 1800 words to explaining how the hyphen should be used. And I quote:

… it is not an ornament but an aid to being understood and should be employed only when it is needed for that purpose… The primary function is to indicate that two or more words are to be read together as a single word with its own meaning.

Well that’s plain enough but even back at this time it seems some people were overdoing it. Sir Winston Churchill wrote that “one must regard the hyphen as a blemish to be avoided wherever possible.”

So now fast forward to our post modern hyphenating 21st century. On your behalf I have consulted no less than three punctuation books which I have listed below. The hyphen is to be used to link words to achieve clarification and to avoid ambiguity or confusion. Interestingly, hyphens can help create new words, for example today used to be written as to-day, and tomorrow as to-morrow and postgraduate as post-graduate.

Acceptable uses of the hyphen include such words as son-in-law, good-for-nothing, and in cases such as ‘There are seven-dollar prizes available’ differentiated from ‘There are seven dollar-prizes available’. Of course there are a myriad of correct uses for hyphens.

But now the hyphen disease is upon us, in truly epidemic proportions. Consider these real examples. In each case the hyphen is unnecessary because the meaning is perfectly clear. Two-decade stagnation, consumer-led economy, one-third of the economy, state-run enterprise, weight-loss pills, city-wide flea market, other party-goers, expense-account and fresh-faced.

Now who is to blame? Well it has to be the usual suspects—those people who work at Redmond, Washington. Yes, that’s right, one or more of the bumptious boffins from Microsoft. The trouble is Microsoft employs over 100,000 people so it will be hard to find the culprits. Therefore the best thing to do to protect your children is to disconnect their computer from the Internet. Indeed all computers in Australia need to be quarantined, that is disconnected for a period, so that the disease can be confined to the United States, where many other acts of barbarity have been committed upon the English language. Good luck with your new hyphen free life. And remember, you are saving your children.

Martin Cutts, The Plain English Guide, Oxford: OUP, 1996.
Graham King, Good Punctuation, Glasgow: Harper Collins, 2004.
J. Morrison, English Punctuation, Kuala Lumpur: Golden Books, 2001

All content copyright—Mark Thackray—Australian Educational Services