On both sides of the Atlantic, the hyphen now gets less use than was the case just five years ago. The latest edition of a prestigious UK dictionary has omitted the hyphen from about 16,000 words. In the US, the same trend has long been evident. More and more people think the hyphen is useless, messy and unnecessary.
Some assume this means that the role of the hyphen in all word compounds will soon be abandoned. Some even say it will soon vanish as a punctuation mark. However, it's too soon to make that claim, although certainly use of the hyphen has been in a steep decline for at least ten years. Many believe that people just can't be bothered with it.
Because of the widespread uncertainty of its usage as a short dash used to connect two words (sometimes more than two) many writers and editors simply omit it. However, in its more utilitarian usage—to link two parts of a word, usually syllables, that have to be separated at the end of a justified printed line—continued use of the hyphen seems assured.
Compound nouns generally began as separate or hyphenated words but have a strong tendency over time to collapse into single words. A century ago, writing "to-day" was standard; "teenager" first appeared as "teen-ager"; in the 1800s, “lipstick began as "lip stick,” and was hyphenated in the 1920s on its way to becoming one word.
In America, "email" is taking over from "e-mail" and the more common practice is to omit the hyphen in such words as "postmodern.” The movement is toward "website" rather than "Web site.”
The new The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary lists many hyphenless words such as "leapfrog", "bumblebee", "crybaby", "pigeonhole", "lowlife", and "upmarket," However the SOED retains hyphens for compound verbs such as "court-martial."
However, hyphen trends flow both ways as many terms return to separate words as in “fig leaf," "fire drill," "ice cream," "pot belly," "test tube," and "water bed."
Unquestionably, the most important issue is to recognize when leaving the hyphen out leaves the meaning unclear. For example, "twenty odd people" means the twenty people who are eccentric, strange and odd; "twenty-odd people" means there are about twenty people in the group being discussed. But most of the time the meaning is clear without the hyphen, so the trend towards omitting it isn't causing many problems.
No doubt about it: the hyphen is slowly vanishing, but it's not dead yet. It will at least be around for a long time playing its necessary role to connect the two parts of a word separated when a line of justified type ends in its middle.
Beyond that, writers who care about how fresh their work will seem in a few years will be well advised to follow this rule: when in doubt, omit the hyphen.
This paraphrased version of an item that appeared in Michael Quinion's .newsletter about English words is reproduced here by permission. Subscribe to this fascinating free newsletter at http://www.worldwidewords.org/ World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion 2007. All rights reserved.
