{"id":45222,"date":"2019-07-26T17:40:42","date_gmt":"2019-07-26T16:40:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=45222"},"modified":"2019-08-02T11:49:12","modified_gmt":"2019-08-02T10:49:12","slug":"jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-hyphenation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2019\/07\/26\/jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-hyphenation\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Hyphenation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2014\/12\/jeffrey_aronson.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-32935 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2014\/12\/jeffrey_aronson-223x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"122\" height=\"153\" \/><\/a>From time to time someone writes asking me to explain some aspect of punctuation. Recently I have been asked to arbitrate between &#8220;sub-group&#8221; and &#8220;subgroup&#8221;. I prefer the latter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The word hyphen comes from the Greek \u1f51\u03d5\u03ad\u03bd, a portmanteau word formed from uniting \u1f51\u03c0\u03cc, under, with \u1f15\u03bd, one. But why should \u201chyphen\u201d mean \u201cunder one\u201d?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Classical Greek and Roman texts and inscriptions were generally written in \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Scriptio_continua#Greek_text\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">scriptio continua<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201d, in which words were written in upper case, without spaces, diacritical marks, or punctuation. In order to show that two words were actually to be read as one, an arc was inserted underneath the junction of the words, as in the picture below.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-45223 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2019\/07\/Aronson-hyphens-fig-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"470\" height=\"327\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2019\/07\/Aronson-hyphens-fig-1.png 470w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2019\/07\/Aronson-hyphens-fig-1-300x209.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 470px) 100vw, 470px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">To understand the need for such a symbol, consider the difference between \u201ca red, hot poker\u201d (a hot poker coloured red) and \u201ca red-hot poker\u201d (a poker that is very hot). The punctuation resolves the ambiguity. The subscript (or <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/grbs.library.duke.edu\/article\/viewFile\/3041\/5813\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">sublinear<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">) hyphen was also <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/629556?Search=yes&amp;resultItemClick=true&amp;searchText=%28&amp;searchText=%22sublinear+hyphen%22&amp;searchText=%29&amp;searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3D%2528%2522sublinear%2Bhyphen%2522%2529&amp;ab_segments=0%2Fdefault-2%2Fcontrol&amp;refreqid=search%3A35b37b6f993c6f1d55537b91ea2e5efb&amp;seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">used<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, by the first century, to indicate that a syllable in a word should be sung to more than one note, whereas previously that had been indicated by duplicating the syllable.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">However, when Johannes Gutenberg started to produce printed texts in the middle of the 15<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">th<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> century, using preset blocks of typeface, he had no way of printing separate sublinear symbols and so he raised the hyphen into the line. He typically used hyphens, printed as slanted equals signs, to split words across lines, as the picture below shows.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2019\/07\/aronson-hyphens-fig-2.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-45224 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2019\/07\/aronson-hyphens-fig-2-300x246.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"246\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2019\/07\/aronson-hyphens-fig-2-300x246.png 300w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2019\/07\/aronson-hyphens-fig-2.png 487w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are broadly speaking two types of hyphens, the link or hard hyphen and the break hyphen. The link hyphen is inserted between two words that are united in a compound word, such as fail-safe, fast-forward, and force-feed. When a noun is used attributively to qualify another word the two may be joined by a hyphen, as in breast-stroke and placebo-controlled. This can also happen in other cases, such as when two nouns are conjoined, as in drug-drug or drug-food interactions. The break hyphen is used to split words over two lines. At one time <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Chambers Dictionary<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> used two such types of hyphen, an ordinary hyphen (-) to indicate the splitting of a word that was not normally split and a double hyphen (=) to indicate that the hyphen belonged to the word; this convention was abandoned in the 9<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">th<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> edition. Deciding where to split a word, whether according to its syllabic components or pronunciation, can be problematic. I have seen \u201csleeplessness\u201d split after \u201cslee-\u201d and \u201csearched\u201d after \u201csear-\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">So how do we solve the problem of \u201csubgroup\u201d? The solution comes from the fact that \u201csub\u201d is a prefix, about which there are guidelines, although not inviolable ones. Prefixes generally do not take following hyphens before the words to which they are affixed, except in certain circumstances. Here they are:<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">If the following word begins with the letter (consonant or vowel) with which the prefix ends (e.g. sub-basement, anti-inflammatory), for the sake of readability.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">If the following word begins with another letter (consonant or vowel) that might cause difficulties in pronunciation. For example, b and p are both bilabial plosive consonants, and a hyphen is often inserted (e.g. sub-problem), although not necessarily (e.g. subpoena, subpopulation, subpleural, subpyloric). In the case of &#8220;subgroup&#8221;, the b is a bilabial plosive and the g is a velar plosive, so there\u2019s no difficulty.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">If the prefix is repeated (e.g. sub-substitute, sub-subcategory).<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">When there may be confusion with another word (e.g. the blessed \u201csub-lessee\u201d).<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Before a capitalized name, a number, or a date (e.g. sub-four-minute mile).<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some prefixes usually take a hyphen (e.g. ex-convict). However, conventions may vary. For example \u201cnon\u201d is sometimes followed by a hyphen, sometimes not. Different publishers adopt different styles, and with time hyphens tend to disappear: \u201cworth while\u201d, for example (cf \u201cworth sixpence\u201d), becomes \u201cworth-while\u201d, which becomes \u201cworthwhile\u201d. In 2007, the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Shorter Oxford English Dictionary<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> dropped hyphens from thousands of words. The dictionary\u2019s Editor, Angus Stevenson, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20071007225223\/http:\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/20925013\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">asserted<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> that &#8220;people are not confident about using hyphens any more, they&#8217;re not really sure what they are for&#8221; and that &#8220;the hyphen is seen as messy looking and old-fashioned.&#8221; Or did he mean \u201coldfashioned\u201d?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">But then again, it\u2019s more fun to hyphenate \u201cnon-hyphenated\u201d than to nonhyphenate it.<\/span><\/p>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr style=\"border: 1px solid black\">\n<td style=\"border: 1px solid black\">\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jamesrmeyer.com\/paradoxes\/grelling-nelson.html\"><b>The Grelling-Nelson paradox<\/b><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u2026or the paradox of the self-describing adjective, also called Weyl&#8217;s paradox. \u201cHyphenated\u201d is not hyphenated\u201d; \u201cnon-hyphenated\u201d is. \u201cShort\u201d is a short word; \u201clong\u201d is not a long word. \u201cPolysyllabic\u201d is polysyllabic; \u201cmonosyllabic\u201d is not monosyllabic. \u201cEnglish\u201d is English; \u201cFrench\u201d is not French. Let\u2019s call these two types of adjective \u201cautological\u201d and \u201cheterological\u201d. So is \u201cheterological\u201d heterological or not? Here\u2019s how Michael Clark unambiguously puts it in <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Paradoxes from A to Z<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> (Routledge, 2002): \u201cIf [\u201cheterological\u201d] is heterological, it doesn\u2019t apply to itself and so it is not. If it is not, it does apply to itself, and so is heterological. In other words, it is if and only if it isn\u2019t.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Jeffrey Aronson<\/strong>\u00a0is a clinical pharmacologist, working in the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine in Oxford&#8217;s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences. He is also president emeritus of the British Pharmacological Society.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Competing interests:<\/strong>\u00a0None declared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From time to time someone writes asking me to explain some aspect of punctuation. Recently I have been asked to arbitrate between &#8220;sub-group&#8221; and &#8220;subgroup&#8221;. I prefer the latter. The [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2019\/07\/26\/jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-hyphenation\/\">More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38359,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5762],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jeff-aronsons-words"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . 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