Re[2]: Sickness of the hyphen

[kcl <kcl -at- HILL -dot- COM>]

>Now the hyphen -- there's a much abused and misused bit of punctuation.
>It really seems to be a terminal case, even among tech writers.  I
>regularly see compound modifiers left unhyphenated, while other word
>pairs gain needlessly gain a hyphen.  Have you noticed?

>Yes, I've noticed--and I suspect it's partly due to the lack of an easily
>remembered rule for using them. Anyone on the list have one?

Coming from an ESL background, it is also due to a move toward
simplifying the English language as it has become the international
language.

The current trend/rule is to hyphenate if it appears as such in the
dictionary and otherwise, only when the meaning could be misinterpreted
without hyphenation. Style guides are beginning to reflect this change.
Most still give the "traditional" rules of hyphenation, but the very
first paragraph under hyphenation typically states the changing role of
the hyphen. The primary rule seems to be to use the hyphen to avoid
ambiguity.

Perhaps a strong influence toward this trend is that the APA style guide
states it as I have above, and the APA is the guide used by many colleges
and universities. Hence, it stands to reason that the "younger
generation" is going to hyphenate as above and the "older generation" is
going to follow the more traditional rules. This seems to be the case in
my company.

Anybody else have similar situations? The hyphen seems to be what I
correct most (along with commas of course)!

kcl -at- hill -dot- com
Tech. Editor