Where Have All the Hyphens Gone?

Certain things in life just bug me. For example, compounds that are missing their hyphens bug me—a lot. The hyphens are missing from work I’m editing (this does not bother me so much, because I’m the editor and fixing that sort of thing is my job), ads and other promotional materials, instruction manuals (yes, I do sometimes resort to reading those things), and published (and presumably edited) books and articles. It seems that everywhere I look I see these little gaps where a hyphen should go.

I’ve read about “sixteen year-old girls” going on dates (call me old-fashioned, but that is just too young!), “gray bearded men” (a little vitamin C and some sunlight would probably bring their color back), and “low flying planes” (a sad plane that is flying?). Of course I change these to “sixteen-year-old girls,” “gray-bearded men,” and “low-flying planes.” And every once in a while an author will ask me to please remove the hyphens. What is this language coming to?

It seems that the hyphen, like the comma, is misunderstood. This is not surprising, since hyphen usage (like comma usage) is to some extent a matter of personal taste. Personally, I like a good hyphen. I go for early-morning walks that are often necessary after my late-night snacks. I have lower-class taste than some people. It seems to me that the three hyphens in those sentences are needed for clarity. I do, however, avoid over-hyphenation. I don’t pick-up my mail or put-away my groceries. I see many high school students walking to school in the mornings (but some would argue that I actually see high-school students, unless the students I see are, in fact, high).

As Chicago says, “Readability and semantic logic are sometimes judged differently by equally literate writers or editors” (7.88). That’s a fancy way of saying one person will insert a hyphen where another would not, and they will both be correct. Fair enough, but some things—a realtor listing a “3 bedroom-, 2 bath-house,” for example—are clearly wrong, and others—a sub shop advertising “two foot long subs”—are wrong and confusing.

What can we do about our missing or misused hyphens? I have just thought of a way to fix our hyphen problem and stimulate the economy at the same time. Picture a brigade of hyphen police: Unemployed English majors would be issued spiffy uniforms and brand-new red pens, and they would roam the country righting hyphen wrongs everywhere they go. They would be sort of like the Grammar Vigilantes, only legal.

What do you think?

Tags: hyphen