Recently I went to dinner with a friend. As we perused the menu, I noticed the following section:
SIX DOLLAR SIDES
french fries
sweet potato fries
vidalia onion rings
spicy broccoli rabe & parmesan
brussels sprouts with orange and sage
jalapeno cheddar grits
I pointed to the list and asked my friend, "If we ordered all of these, how much would it cost?"
He studied the options for a moment and then said, "thirty-six dollars."
I shook my head. "Actually, it would be six dollars."
"Huh?" was his response.
I explained that without a hyphen in "six-dollar sides," the menu lists six sides that cost one dollar each. The hyphen removes the ambiguity.
"Ah," he said. "You're right. I'm just so used to seeing things like that without a hyphen that I don't even notice anymore."
His comment made me a little sad, because I knew he was speaking the truth. So many people today just don't seem to care about using hyphens properly. But they matter. In a previous post I gave an example I see every single day: the omission of a hyphen in the term "small-business owner." Without the hyphen, you are talking about an owner of businesses who happen to be a small person.
I know a hyphen is just a little line on your computer screen. But it makes a big difference, so it should matter! Especially to small-business owners who are tall. Or restaurant owners who don't want to sell six plates of food for a grand total of six dollars.
-Maria
Maria Murnane is the best-selling author of the romantic comedies Perfect on Paper, It's a Waverly Life, and Honey on Your Mind. She also provides consulting services on book publishing and marketing. Learn more at www.mariamurnane.com.
This blog post originally appeared on CreateSpace.com. Reprinted with permission. © 2012 CreateSpace, a DBA of On-Demand Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved.
Comment
Comment by Zetta Brown on August 31, 2012 at 1:02am You nailed it, Maria! Another thing is when people confuse the em-dash with the en-dash. That used to be one of my pitfalls.
Comment by Deepa Agarwal on August 30, 2012 at 9:52pm Thanks Maria for illustrating the use of hyphens with those excellent examples. Hyphens and apostrophes are important in order to make the meaning clear in text. Readers may not always notice the errors but are likely to experience some confusion about the meaning. I feel that in writing poetry you can take a lot of liberty with the rules of grammar but in prose you need to be a little cautious. In the end it's the rhythm of your writing that is most important and that should capture the reader's ear.
Comment by Amyah L on August 30, 2012 at 11:22am Hello Maria and everybody! I use the hyphen a lot to isolate thoughts but I hate to hyphenate a word... and I love apostrophes also, like Sheryl :) All those signs are important as they put order in a text, I think. It separates, classify the thoughts, indicate precisely to the reader what you are thinking and what you want to say, give a time to breath, a space to think, a way to follow the story, to express our writer's voice. I can understand changes in some rules like the one space instead of two after the period when you are starting a new sentence -- at the end of a long manuscripts you save sometimes pages but, for the rest of it, it is part of the freedom of expression and the explosion of creativity. Still, we have to be logic but... instead of searching for the black spot or the error, why not just read and enter the flow of the story!
I completely agree and often go back when editing and add hyphens. Good examples, Maria!
Another thing that drives me bonkers is the seeming trend against using apostrophes.
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