“Hyphens are dying!” declares hysterical BBC

In what must surely be a slow news day, the BBC solemnly reports that the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary has removed hyphens from 16,000 words. Hyphens are “enjoying [sic] a difficult time at the moment”, apparently.

As usual, the blame lies in the internet. We’re so busy busy busy writing emails that we don’t have time for hyphens. “When you are sending e-mails, and you have to type pretty fast, on the whole it’s easier to type without hyphens,” exaggerates Geoffrey Leech, former professor of linguistics and English language at Lancaster University.

But why, as a self-confessed linguistics geek, am I being so sneering about this news? Uh, because it isn’t news.

Generally speaking, new compound words use hyphens to make their meaning more obvious. Electronic mail might at first be abbreviated to e mail. But that lonely e might be confusing, so it hold hands with its other half in e-mail. As the word becomes more commonly used, the two halves are considered a whole, and email finally emerges, independent and triumphant.

The truth, of course, is that the hyphen will never die. Not when there are lonely affixes to stick before, in and after words. It’s got nothing to do with the internet. To-morrow and good-bye once had hyphens, and then they lost them too. Boo-flippin-hoo.