The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary announced this month that it has committed punctuational genocide, eliminating 16,000 hyphens from its pages. Either by combining two words into one or simply uncoupling them—severing the corpus callosum between them—editors of the dictionary’s sixth edition have seen fit to knock hyphens from its pages like so many teeth from a hockey goaltender’s mouth. So, ice-cream becomes ice cream and chick-pea chickpea.
I always stumble over the “two words”, “hyphenated-word”, or “oneword” quandary.
Friday bonus-quote:
I feel like such a free spirit, and I’m really enjoying this so-called…iced-cream.
# 2007 Sep 28
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