The End Of Hyphens???
It's official: people are lazy!
In the new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, about 16,000 words have lost their hyphen, simply because people are too bothered to remember to use it.
For instance, bumble-bee is now bumblebee and ice-cream is ice cream.
In the age of text messaging and downsizing thoughts to 140 characters, people have forgotten how to use the hyphen, and thus, it has been stripped away from many compound nouns found in the dictionary.
Angus Stevenson, editor of the Shorter OED, explained:
"People are not confident about using hyphens anymore, they're not really sure what they are for…Printed writing is very much design-led these days in adverts and Web sites, and people feel that hyphens mess up the look of a nice bit of typography. The hyphen is seen as messy looking and old-fashioned."
This is rather disheartening, no?
Next thing you know, we'll be teaching first-graders how to abbreviate words before they learn how to spell them correctly.
Welcome to the 21st century!
Chubs In The City
who-the-hell-cares
Ha-Ha-Ha-Who-Cares?
Perez commenting on grammar? How precious.
I cant believe you of all ppl r trying to chastise us for not spelling correctly. what a frigging joke.
That's funny how the CEO used 2 hyphenated words in his statement. HAHA! I love the hyphen!
WTF?!
This just in: Perez starts taking English lessons! Now his spelling and grammar might make sense!
I love that they hyphenated "design-led" and "old-fashioned" in the explaination.
The last thing we need is for Internet cockroach Perez Hilton to be editorializing on the decline of spelling and grammar. It's a rare article posted to this site that isn't rife with errors. Perhaps some of those first-graders could help his editorial team (which I think just consists of his mother and the retarded sister)?
This coming from the blog with perhaps the worst grammar on the internet? It must be a slow day.
Only thing is, "ice cream" hasn't had a hyphen in AMERICAN English in years and years and years. (The Shorter OED is the Shorted OXFORD English Dictionary–as in, Oxford, ENGLAND.)
Ditto for "bumblebee," which has been without a hyphen in AMERICAN English in decades. I'm not sure it ever had it.
This isn't laziness due to the text-messaging age. It's the natural evolution of language–a process that was documented well before computers were ever invented.
Terms start as multiple words (free lance; God be with ye), get shortened (God b'ye), get linked with a hyphen (free-lance; good-bye), and eventually become solid (freelance; and the soon-to-arrive "goodbye"). Sometimes, if the resulting compound (icecream) is too funny looking or hard to understand, the hyphen simply goes away.
It's simply the natural simplification of language as terminology becomes more familiar (E-mail to e-mail to email?)
Oh, like you care? Suddenly, Perez worries about the proper use of the English language?
DO NOT BE ABSURD.
YOU ARE ONE OF THE MOST CULPABLE IN LOWERING THE QUALITY OF GRAMMAR AND SENTENCE STRUCTURE, AS WELL AS SPELLING, OF ALL OF SITES OF THE INTERNETS.
Put up or Shut up Perez.
New speak. Hello 1984.
New speak. 1984!! oooooohhhh.
who cares i didnt even kno it was important
This entry is rich, coming from someone that chronically has grammatical errors in his blog posts and routinely spells wrong the names of the people he writes about.
OMG, perez-hilton commenting on grammar is like Michael Vick as a spokesperson for the Humane Society. If you ever learn the difference between its and it's,…
Whoever writes this English butchering website doesn't know the difference between a plural and a possessive, your and you're, their and there, etc. etc. It's official - Perez and family members are lazy and ignorant.
I wish it would be the end of exclamation marks for Perez !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No one in the history of writing has over used the exclamation mark more than Perez Hilton !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He especially needs to sop using them in titles !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Perez, you are kidding, right? YOU of all people stepping on a soapbox about appropriate grammar? You are nothing but a FAT-ASS and a DUMB-ASS.
I didn't realize today was April 1st.
Given the plethora of crappy spelling and grammar on this site, including missed hyphens, you have no room to talk.
wtf bumble-bee was never bumble-bee. it was bumblebee when i was in kindergarten, 20-something years ago.
You can't even spell check your own website properly, fat man. Jesus Christ.
Soon they won't be teaching kids how to spell at all! I'm a third grade teacher and our district is telling us not to waste time in the school day teaching kids spelling and grammar. We're being told those things aren't as important as other things. Oh yea, let's just rely on spell check for the rest of our lives! I don't care what they say, it will be over my dead body that I stop teaching spelling and grammar.
yeah they were talking about getting rid of semi colons too or something stupid… why do we always cater to the idiots of this world?
I agree–who cares?
I never know when to use it either. Guess that makes me a dumbass
This news came out in 2007. Get your facts straight Perez!
Re: Micherre – ok now; newspeak is more like "teh aol spaek" this is brit english finally imitating american english
perez, this came out in 2007…a little late!
why am i not surprised??? English is all about abbreviating and americans are well-known to be lazy (and incredibly ignorant).
most of those words didn't have hyphens in the 1970s….
Losing a hyphen is not like abbreviating words, it really doesn't make a difference. Languages change over time, it's just the way it is.
Yeah cause you are Mr. spell-every-thing-right.. Ass
Re: TootsNYC – WOW
Oh, like you're one to comment on this at all, Perez. Hah! That's LAUGHABLE! ;P
BmBL B*
When did 'bumblebee' or 'ice cream' ever have hyphens? I just looked both words up in an American Heritage dictionary from 1974 and neither has a hyphen.
kids already do not know how to write in cursive properly. basic handwriting is starting to die out.
who give's a shit.
It is called evolution
rarely ever do i use hyphens. not because i'm lazy, but because i forget.
Perez writes more honestly than most. Thank you for that Sir
Well we all know Perez and his ghost writer have terrible spelling, punctuation and grammar. I find it amusing that they are upset about this.
Hyphens are not only overused, but in the majority of cases they are unnecessary/surplus to requirements.
And no, it is far from disheartening. What is disheartening is the hyphen advocates' penchant for hyphenating every fucking thing in sight. Since when did every phrase (e.g. "old fashioned") require adjoining via a hyphen? They're two entirely separate words goddammit, so why needlessly complicate proceedings with some pointless fucking hyphenation? Just give it a rest, you hyphen fucktards.
What the hell? People are so dumb now days…. Seriously, it's just sad.
The English language is butchered enough. Shit, why not just get rid of commas, periods, correct spelling; screw it all! I mean, just look at how atrocious the spelling & grammar is sites like this. Come on, we're not THAT busy if we have time to be on here!
THIS IS ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF A LIVING LANGUAGE, STYLES CHANGE AND THUS SO MUST THE WRITTEN WORD.
In MY job, hyphens are important but I gotta tell ya, doctors and assholes have taken the hyphens out of medical terminology and it is just ridiculous.
Is this editor trying to be ironic? i.e. "design-led and old-fashioned" … Funny guy!
there's a difference between giving in to bad grammar and actual grammar shift. When books even have the word "bumblebee" spelled as one word, and I can't remember the last time I bought a carton of "ice-cream" then it's safe to say that it's an official shift. I don't think that forget-me-not's will be changed any time soon. I wouldn't blame text messaging and laziness for this one.
Re: TootsNYC – Thanks for that..(i'm not being sarcastic btw), I didn't know that about the goodbye thing….a insteresting fact…
Sheesh, who are your news sources? This happened two years ago (Sept 07) when the 6th Edn of the OED was printed. A simple Google search would have shown you this on many sites… Newsweek, BBC, etc.