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| -Short Attention Span Theater- | |
| Hyphen falls victim to the email society | |
| 2007-09-22 | |
| It's small, flat and a useful piece of punctuation. The hyphen, according to the latest edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, is becoming extinct, a victim of the text message and the email. The sixth edition of the dictionary has knocked the hyphens out of 16,000 words, many of them two-word compound nouns. Fig-leaf is now fig leaf, pot-belly is now pot belly, pigeon-hole has finally achieved one-word status and leap-frog is now leapfrog. The reason, says Angus Stevenson, editor of the dictionary, is that we no longer have time to reach over to the hyphen key.
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| Posted by:Fred |
| #17 First they came for the hyphens and I did not speak out because I do not like my steaks well done. Then they came for the exclamation points and I did not speak out because only in my heart did I shout, “Damn them all.” Then they came for the asterisks and I did not speak out because I use HTML Then they came for the @ sign And the Internet was destroyed … |
| Posted by: Zenster 2007-09-22 20:57 |
| #16 I kind of prefer underlined spaces to hyphens because they parse as single tokens on unix command lines. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2007-09-22 19:56 |
| #15 Just trying to conserve a limited natural resource, Bobby. ;-) |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-09-22 18:42 |
| #14 Not to be confused with the dash. The hyphen connects, IIRC, whilst the dash separate. TW applied two hypehns to approximate a dash. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2007-09-22 14:40 |
| #13 We don't need no stinkin tilde. Hey wxjames, lay of the tilde! How else am I gonna console into my games so I can enter my cheat codes??? |
| Posted by: mcsegeek1 2007-09-22 14:40 |
| #12 No worries -- I'll keep the hyphens well-exercised until the rest of the world comes to their senses. ;-) |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-09-22 12:56 |
| #11 Today the hyphen, tomorrow the tilde. We don't need no stinkin tilde. |
| Posted by: wxjames 2007-09-22 12:25 |
| #10 Never gonna miss snooty hyphenated names ever... Yeah, like Rodham-Clinton. |
| Posted by: mcsegeek1 2007-09-22 11:55 |
| #9 Never gonna miss snooty hyphenated names ever... |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2007-09-22 11:51 |
| #8 trouble is, as we guys age, our hyphens can't stay up, and become underscores.... bummer |
| Posted by: Frank G 2007-09-22 09:41 |
| #7 PS: does the place in Dahomey let them out for regular exercise? They end up looking like ) if they don't get to run on in a sentence once in a while .... |
| Posted by: lotp 2007-09-22 06:45 |
| #6 Fred, I have a modest stash of my own - for emergency use of course - so if you want a backup site let me know. I could fit a small container on the back 40 here. |
| Posted by: lotp 2007-09-22 06:44 |
| #5 Noones gonna like thisn |
| Posted by: Thomas Woof 2007-09-22 03:27 |
| #4 <:-) Hyphens make good noses. I've rented a large storage-container to hold them until the world comes to its senses. It's in Dahomey, if you want to drop by and visit them. Fred, You'll either make a fortune when come back , or a killing! |
| Posted by: Red Dawg 2007-09-22 01:42 |
| #3 I protest! |
| Posted by: Nigel Nigel Hyphen Hyphen Stroke Money 2007-09-22 01:26 |
| #2 It's just a tradeoff, for every "-" I leave out I have to type an "@" |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2007-09-22 00:39 |
| #1 The reason...is that we no longer have time to reach over to the hyphen key. That gets my vote for for stupid-of-the-day. I thought hyphens were dying 'cause Strunk & White said not to use 'em. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2007-09-22 00:16 |