Do you give the hyphen the respect it deserves? Take this simple test to know for sure:
* Are you a “cold hearted person” or a “cold-hearted person”?
* When do you say “half-hour” instead of “half hour”?
* If you create something for the second time, is that “re-creation” or “recreation”?
* If you’re a “98-pound weakling,” are you also a “44.5-kilogram weakling”?
* Was the Hyphen War really about a hyphen? What would your Czech friend say?
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyphen and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyphen_War for answers.
(Many thanks to David R., a self-proclaimed “stickler” about clear and concise writing, who provided the content for this post. Even a writing stickler has his grammatical soft spots, however. He admitted, ”I’ll bandy about a friendly fragment periodically. And I love dashes!” We do, too — as long as they aren’t overused.)
