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To hyphenate, or not to hyphenate?
Ah, the English language, that tricky orthographic beast. Even our punctuation is troublesome. Apparently, the hyphen is losing its place in dictionaries.
The hyphen still has its uses, though.
Even Mr. Stevenson puts in a good word for the hyphen especially beloved by grammarians and so vexing to civilians, the one that turns a noun phrase into a compound adjective. A slippery-eel salesman, for example, sells slippery eels, while a slippery eel salesman takes your money and slinks away.
I'm still not so sure I'll ever get used to referring to my colleagues as "coworkers" — the bovine undertones always make me giggle. (SUZANNE)
October 11, 2007
