Confound modifiers

I don't know what their problem is, but almost to the idiot, the Demand Media TitleBots fail to hyphenate compound modifiers.

I've got a blood-pressure spike at the moment.

Dead Man Walking Dumb Man Reading

To borrow a phrase in order to summarize the ruling principle on the use of arguably the most hated punctuation mark:

It’s better that 10 dumb men not be confused than one intelligent man be insulted.

(Hyphen Day continued below.)

Will you take the Pledge?

Hyphens, Schmyphens

I've written about them before and doubtless will again. For they are troublesome little creatures for many writers.

I'm working on a manuscript whose author either missed the grammar lessons on punctuation marks or (as another author previously mentioned here) writes as if he's being paid by the hyphen; or both.

You know the weird dynamic that can occur when the more you look at a certain (correct) word, the more it looks wrong? Or when a repeated error begins to look correct? Such is the case with the profusion of unnecessary hyphens in this book. By unnecessary, I mean they appear in phrases that could be compound modifiers if followed by a noun. But they stand on their own in the book—in the company of their errant hyphens—and they appear so often that I've questioned my own knowledge. Some examples:

• guns-in-schools


• out-of-step


• computer-accessible


• after-the-fact


• metal-detector


• fellow-travelers


• around-the-bend


• true-believer


• less-than-comfortable


• face-to-face

I mentioned this to a colleague. He articulated the issue perfectly: "I recently worked on a book that was so full of hyphens I started to doubt my ability to reason out the phrases."

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.