# lack of hyphens in thread titles



## GavinW

Example: "long-lost" (adj) vs. "long lost"

I'm not a do-or-die prescriptivist. I'm even perhaps coming to accept "anymore" as a closed compound adverb standing for "any more" (presumbaly we'll all soon be writing "anylonger" as one word as well...). But the question of the (non-)use of hyphens in thread titles really bugs me.
As far as I'm aware, there isn't a large-scale movement in the language to regard hyphens as increasingly optional and dispensable. Were this the case, I wouldn't be opening this thread. So when I see non-grammatical (and therefore either impenetrable or ambiguous) terms in thread titles it prompts me to inundate the Italian-English mods with report-a-threads soliciting the addition of a hyphen. Often, other posts in the thread (and sometimes the questioners themselves) contradict the thread title by remembering to put in the hyphen in subsequent discussion of the term in question. But few spot the absence of the hyphen as something that needs to be picked up on. Things are slipping through the net.
What can be done? Does anything need to be done? I think so. We're creating a database here in which the lack of a hyphen has, I believe, the same status (ie it's important) as spelling mistakes (which certainly "need" to be corrected). 
Solution? A sticky dedicated exclusively to the subject? Overkill, surely. Maybe mods just need reminding. I just did a spot-check (or "spot check"?): "long-lost" had a thread in the French-English forum without the hyphen. My guess is that the problem is pretty widespread.


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## Pedro y La Torre

For the record, it doesn't bother me. One must also take the AE/AusE/BE differences on this into account.


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## GavinW

Thanks Pedro. 
Sure, we're usually all pretty tolerant over the use of hyphens generally. We have to be, and we can usually afford to be. It can be a bit of a grey area anyway, certainly in the case of many individual examples of compounds. But I'd argue we need to be less tolerant of something which I can confidently describe as "careless" use, specifically because we're trying to build a useful database (and work of reference) here.

On your specific point of regional variations, I think we need to be a bit more careful: the Wikipedia entry only discusses the "opposition" that exists between a closed compound (eg counterattack) and its hyphenated equivalent (counter-attack). What I'm stressing are the problems associated with a third, often "imagined" option involving a hypothetical (often erroneous) open compound (thus: counter attack).

Or am I genuinely missing something?


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## jann

Hello GavinW,

It would take a long time to correct all hyphen-less thread titles in a systematic fashion, and surely the EO moderators have more pressing issues to deal with.  

Practical considerations aside, off the top of my head, I can think of one reason that the moderators might be hesitant to add hyphens in all the instances that you might prefer to see them:  many people use the dictionary result title lists to search for expressions. We wouldn't want non-natives to have trouble locating existing threads because they omit the hyphen in their search (as per their source document), whereas all existing thread titles had been corrected to include the hyphen.  On the French-English forums we actually apply this logic to common spelling errors on occasion, listing both forms of the word in the title with [sic]. 

I think that omitting hyphens may perhaps be more widely accepted that you realize.   Here, for example, you can read some comments from the online editors of the NY Times.  I don't intend to take a position either way in this post; I just wanted to submit a few observations and reflections on the topic. 

Jann
member and French forums moderator


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## TrentinaNE

jann said:


> I think that omitting hyphens may perhaps be more widely accepted that you realize. Here, for example, you can read some comments from the online editors of the NY Times.


I read the Times piece as pointing out situations where hyphens are not appropriate. It's not advocating the omission of hyphens in cases that do call for them. 

Bear in mind that the Times thinks the plural of CPU is CPU's [sic]. 

The search argument sounds valid to me. 

Elisabetta


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## Cagey

> I just did a spot-check (or "spot check"?): "long-lost" had a thread in the French-English forum without the hyphen.


You did a spot check.  Spot-check is the verb form.

The reason I mention this, aside from being pesky, is to demonstrate that many of us who use the dictionary will be uncertain of what takes a hyphen in particular instances.  In some cases there are regional differences.  In others, variations are accepted by the dictionaries themselves. For this reason, the words entered for searches are not consistent.  We do sometimes put alternative spellings in brackets, as Jann says.


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## GavinW

OK, thanks for the replies everyone. Interesting to hear about the French forums' recording of alternative (non-standard) spelling/orthography. I'll have to check that out to see what it means in practice.

NYT: hmm, not totally convinced (after reading about CPU's and the pleonastic greengrocer's Anglo-Saxon genitive). 

Cagey: just for the sake of my pride, I should mention I knew which was right (spot check vs spot-check). The confusion was only apparent, "rhetorical" if you like, to reinforce the point I was making. But obviously it wasn't effective in doing that.

However, all in all, I have to say I'm pretty much sticking to my guns on this, and will continue to bombard the mods in the forum(s) I visit with post-a-thread-alerts over this and other kinds of mistaken orthography... Also because of (ie specifically in view of) the poor usage Trentina, for one, picked up on: the omission of the hyphen, in cases where it is required, creating an open compound which is not the result of regional variation, or what have you, but is a freak, something which "does not exist in nature" [eek!].

Cheers.
EDIT: Oh, and I wouldn't necessarily advocate such rigour on the EO forum. There may be a stronger case for tightening up on such matters for the benefit of non-native speakers, on bilingual forums.


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## cuchuflete

Two small points about English Only:

1) There is genuine disagreement among some of the more senior members about hyphens.  At times a hyphen is required, and there is little room for argument; at others it may be a stylistic preference.  A search of that forum's threads will reveal some interesting threads on the topic.

2) When the moderators have sufficient time, we may add a "correct" form of a term to a thread title, but we tend to leave the original form as written by the thread starter. The logic is that many learners may make similar mistakes, not only in writing, but in entering terms in dictionary and forum searches as well.  Thus a "wrong" form may aid a search.


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## jann

TrentinaNE said:


> I read the Times piece as pointing out situations where hyphens are not appropriate. It's not advocating the omission of hyphens in cases that do call for them.


 I'm sorry if I wasn't clear.  I didn't link to that article to justify omitting hyphens.  I linked to it to demonstrate that matters of hyphenation can be difficult, and errors (of inclusion or omission) widespread.  This increases the chances that a forum member will search for the "wrong" form of a word... and means that it is helpful to have these forms in thread titles.  I think cuchuflete explained it better: 


cuchuflete said:


> [...] we may add a "correct" form of a term to a thread title, but we tend to leave the original form as written by the thread starter. The logic is that many learners may make similar mistakes, not only in writing, but in entering terms in dictionary and forum searches as well.  Thus a "wrong" form may aid a search.


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