Disappearing hyphens?

Since a big deal is being made about supposedly disappearing hyphens, let’s apply a little perspective to the discussion.

The first thing to realize is that the furor is the result of a promotional campaign for a new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary; the sixth edition has omitted 16,000 hyphens that were included in the previous edition. The popular press has blamed e-mail for this, but the trend toward reduced hyphenation has actually been going on since at least the middle of the twentieth century.

What makes this a nonstory for me — besides the “who cares” aspect — is the source. If you are using the Oxford English Dictionary as a guide to spelling, all I can say is, stop now. The OED has no equal as an etymological and historical dictionary of English usage. But as a guide to spelling it has always been decades behind the times, and that’s exactly what we’re dealing with here. The sixth edition of the Shorter is playing catch-up with other dictionaries, and now is hardly the time to make a fuss about hyphens that perished half a century ago.

Check out these examples — not chosen by me but just picked up from the press reports — of words that according to SOED6 have changed from being hypenated to being spelled open or closed:

• Words that the SOED now spells open:
  • fig leaf
  • hobby horse
  • ice cream
  • pin money
  • pot belly
  • test tube

• Words that the SOED now spells closed:
  • bumblebee
  • chickpea
  • crybaby
  • leapfrog
  • logjam

Okay, now compare those to versions from a dictionary that people actually use as a guide to spelling, Websters New Collegiate. Just to make things clearer, I’ll use the ninth edition, published in 1983.

• fig leaf
• hobbyhorse
• ice cream
• pin money
• potbelly
• test tube
• bumblebee
• chick-pea
• crybaby
• leapfrog
• logjam

You see? This has nothing at all to do with e-mail. Already a quarter century ago — in the real world if not in the OED — there was only one hyphen remaining in the entire lot that is now being used to support this story. Congratulations to the Oxford folks for successfully framing this story as one about disappearing hyphens. But the real story is that the OED is beginning to take its head out of the sand and move closer to the practice of real contemporary dictionaries.

RELATED: Typophile: What’s your favorite hyphen?

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