Good riddance, hyphen

[Porter]

The OED has exorcised the hyphen from 16000 words, including ice-cream and bumble-bee.

Some were concatenated together, others were split into two.

Explaining why the hyphen is disappearing, the editor of the Shorter OED said this:

"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."

[Jonathon]

Thanks for the link. I'm glad that the article didn't take the stupid "English is going to pot" angle that some others have taken. I'm not sure I agree with all the reasons why the hyphen is disappearing from some words.

From what I've seen, I totally agree that many people are just not sure when to use hyphens, but I think this usually results in overcorrection, not underuse. I've never encountered any "distaste for its ungainly horizontal bulk," either. And I don't think it really has much to do with "informal ways of communicating." There's been a tendency to streamline and simplify the use of punctuation ever since it was first introduced in writing.

[dkw]

I don't think I've ever seen ice cream with a hyphen.  Or bumblebee or hobby horse or chickpea or most of the others on that list.

I guess that's why they changed 'em.  

[pooka]

Have they all gone to a compoud word?  I've never seen ice cream with a hypen, but I've also never seen icecream.

Twenty-odd people came to the party, he said. Or was it twenty odd people?

 

[Porter]

Some went to compound words, some were split into two words.

I'm not sure I've ever known anybody who uses e-mail.

[Jonathon]

I use it, though I don't care enough to be consistent.


So what's with the attempted link to an emoticon in the subtitle of the thread?

[Tante Shvester]

I always write "email", even though my spell checkers all insist (until I tell them otherwise) that I meant to say "e-mail".

[Porter]

The subtitle was supposed to be "", but the software decided that it was an emoticon, which is weird, since it doesn't allow emoticons in subtitles.

I'll see if I can fix it.

[Porter]

Weird.  Even if I disable emoticons in the post, it still replaces "" with the crap you see up there.

[Jonathon]

Strange.

[Icarus]

I use "e-mail." There are a lot of circumstances in which I use hyphens, but none of them are listed in the first post. All of them are correct according to the Style Manual of Joe, though.

[pooka]

I write "e-mail" now.  But we also do not use contractions in our style manual and we write out all state names, except he usually lets District of Columbia slide.

[Zalmoxis]

I'm not sure I've ever known anybody who uses e-mail.

Everybody who follows AP style does. I wonder if AP style will change to follow the OED.

[Porter]

I write "e-mail" now.  But we also do not use contractions in our style manual and we write out all state names, except he usually lets District of Columbia slide.

Who wrote your style guide -- Data?

[Jonathon]

I'm not sure I've ever known anybody who uses e-mail.

Everybody who follows AP style does. I wonder if AP style will change to follow the OED.

Where does it say that the Shorter OED changed the spelling to email? And I'm guessing that even if they had email and not e-mail, AP style wouldn't change—it follows Merriam-Webster's.

[Porter]

Where does it say that the Shorter OED changed the spelling to email?

It doesn't.

It's just that forcing people to say "e-mail" instead of "email" is one of the more annoying standardized superfluous hyphens.

[pooka]

I write "e-mail" now.  But we also do not use contractions in our style manual and we write out all state names, except he usually lets District of Columbia slide.

Who wrote your style guide -- Data?

 

We also write out Street, Avenue et al. but use E., W. etc.  We also use etc. and not et ceteral, and very often don't italicize it.  Though plenty of other stuff gets italicized.  

[Tante Shvester]

My mom's name got italicized when she got remarried to an Italian guy.

[Icarus]

Where does it say that the Shorter OED changed the spelling to email?

It doesn't.

It's just that forcing people to say "e-mail" instead of "email" is one of the more annoying standardized superfluous hyphens.

I don't consider it superfluous. I think that's an extremely logical place for a hyphen. I've never gotten on anybody's case about it, though. If I were in a position to make editorial style decisions, though, I would.

[Porter]

I consider it superfluous because the word "email" is so well known that there is no need for the hyphen.

[Jonathon]

I'm not sure the fact that it's well-known has any bearing on whether it needs a hyphen. Compare parallel constructions like A-bomb and T-shirt, both of which have not only a hyphen but a capital letter (though I often see them without the capital). They're not completely analogous, of course, because *tshirt is not well-formed by any standard of English spelling, and *abomb is still questionable.

[Porter]

Yup.  The difference is that everybody already knows what email is, but many people would be confused and not understand what an abomb is.

[Jonathon]

Again, I don't think it's an issue of familiarity. Notice that according to the rules of English spelling, abomb would never be pronounced "AY-bom"—it'd be "uh-BOM" instead. But email matches its pronunciation, so it seems okay.

[Icarus]

Yup.  The difference is that everybody already knows what email is, but many people would be confused and not understand what an abomb is.

You seem to be assuming that "email" is already the standard usage. I don't agree that it is. In fact, it looks pretty dang odd to me.  

[Porter]

I'm assuming that it is a standard usage.

Let's check google....

OK, I get 4e9 for e-mail, and 2e9 for email.

One third (of the total usage) is big enough that I'd say that, assuming we can trust the numbers, my assumption is confirmed.