Hyphens perish as English marches on

[MrCoffee]

LONDON - About 16,000 words have succumbed to pressures of the Internet age and lost their hyphens in a new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

Bumble-bee is now bumblebee, ice-cream is ice cream and pot-belly is pot belly. And if you've got a problem, don't be such a crybaby (formerly cry-baby).

The hyphen has been squeezed as informal ways of communicating, honed in text messages and emails, spread on Web sites and seep into newspapers and books.

"People are not confident about using hyphens anymore, they're not really sure what they are for," said Angus Stevenson, editor of the Shorter OED, the sixth edition of which was published this week.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20925013/

the first person to copycat this better keep it clean.

[supernova]

1. Not just hyphens

I think a lot of punctuation, except for commas and periods is going the way of the dinosaur. In the internet age, anything that slows you down and doesn't contribute meaning is being jettisoned, it seems to me.

The odd exception to that seems to be using 's for plurals. x(

[Dr. Strange]

5. Ugh! That plurals thing pisses me off!

[TommyO]

8. Dont you mean its the "plural's" thing?

Yes, I purposely dropped all of the other apostrophe's (did it again), they were slowing me down!

[Dr. Strange]

10. Don't make me come over there!

I will strike you down with the great apostrophe of justice!

[TommyO]

12. It would be well deserved

I'm a bit of an apostrophe nut myself, cringing when they're used incorrectly.

[ashling]

15. That's that plurals' thing

:hi:

[Deep13]

2. I can see how they would be confused...

...what with the abolition of grammar school and all.

Hyphen:

To break a word at the end of a line.

Compound adjectives consisting of a noun and a progressive verb. Idiot-causing, video-playing, attention-shortening mass media is to blame.

Some other compound words.

Dash:

Used in place of commas or parenthesis.

[Hugin]

3. I'd like to think I've played a large hand in this...

:)

[Oeditpus Rex]

4. 'in text messages and emails'

Well, there y'go.

:eyes:

[Burma Jones]

6. And 80 years ago, it was "to-day"

[Lance_Boyle]

7. Don't worry,

you can still use your hyphen for subtraction, or as a nose. ;-)

[THUNDER HANDS]

9. eventually we'll all be writing in text message format

i blv its strg nw, l8er.

[Deja Q]

11. How about the second person who copycats it?

:hide:

[Bucky]

13. In a well armed society, commas would not be endangered.

You don't want to fuck with a fully loaded punctuation mark.

[TZ]

14. what about hyphenated names?

I have a friend with THREE hyphens in her name (one in her first two in her last)..Jo-anne is different from Joanne in her book....:-)