Get 'em while they're hot!

The economy is tanking, and stock can be bought for bargain basement prices. In the swirl of economic news, however, I somehow have missed the fact that there’s a fire sale on hyphens.

Or so it would seem, based on the last two books I’ve edited. The authors write as if they’re being paid by the hyphen (e.g., inter-national: yikes; the mid-west: oh c’mon).

I have never seen a punctuation mark so abused.