Hyphens sometimes seem like relics from the Age of Typewriters, when you had to hit a metal lever to roll the paper to a new line when you reached the right-hand margin, even if you were in the middle of a word. The hyphen told your reader that you weren’t finished yet and that the rest of the word was on the way. (Why do I feel I should explain iceboxes and record players next?) Word-processing programs move the whole word automatically when a margin is about to be breached, so hyphens have lost importance. They’re still around, though, creating compound words. Or at least, that’s what they’re supposed to do. Take a look:
Experienced sales? Sales-help?
I caught sight of this sign while I was walking on First Avenue. I doubled back to figure out what “experienced sales” were. Sales that had seen a lot of life and now had a world-weary, been-there-done-that attitude? Sales that know the lady holding a bagel, venti soy latte, and cell phone is automatically bad news? Or was “sales” meant to be read all by itself as a new, nonsexist term for the older terms “salesman” and “saleslady”? A hyphen between sales and help would link those words and clarify the meaning.
All is not lost on the hyphen front, however. Here’s one that works:
One-stop as a single description! Grammarian of the Year Award to the NYC Information Center!
Shout-out to the NYC agency that made one description out of two words, one and stop. Shouts (actually yells) to the laundry that mangled this sign:
Laundry machine? Machine press?
What’s a laundry machine? Or a hand press? Yes, I know I’m grumpy grammarian again, because I did eventually figure out that machine press is the opposite of hand press. I’m still not over skirt plested in the top right column, but as soon as it stops raining, I plan to run out to buy two politically correct pajams.
To exit on a high note, here’s a truck with three (count ’em) correct hyphens, which create two compound adjectives:
If you’re relocating to New-York (the older form of this city’s name), consider this company. They may ruin your furniture (or you may do that yourself), but you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that the hyphens on the truck are in the proper spots.