Authors Blog

Hyp-hen Hil-a-ri-ty

I enjoy discovering stupid hyphenations. Microsoft Word gives us bin-aural, instead of bi-naural. The New York Daily News printed iP-hone and Fa-cebook. Ebooks produce gems. The Brothers Emanuel presented swit-ching. Is it related to the I Ching? I’ve also seen booksto-re, disappoin-ting, depen-ding and increa-sing—in one book.

Usually, the first fragment of a hyphenated word provides a hint of what’s on the next line, but not always. I found min-dreading in the excellent bio of Walt Disney by Neal Gabler.

Hyphenation can be debatable. Microsoft Word and Dictionary.com accept eve-ryone. Merriam-Webster does not. Neither do I. My rule is that the first part of a hyphenated word should not be pronounced differently by itself than when it’s part of a larger word. I think most people expect “eve” to be pronounced “eev”—not “ev” or “ev-uh.” The “eve” in “evening” is not pronounced like the “eve” in “everyone.” Word sometimes makes bad guesses and you’ll have to overrule its decisions. Proofread very carefully and never have complete faith in robots.

“The-rapist” is my favorite abomination sanctioned by Microsoft. I also really like “of-fline” “who-lesaler,” “Fa-cebook,” “books-tore,” “upl-oad,” “wastel-and,” “proo-freading,” “apo-strophe,” “li-mited,” “identic-al,” “firs-thand,””fi-ne,” “fru-strating,” “whe-never,” “foo-ter,” “miles-tone,” “grays-cale,” “distri-bute,” “percen-tage,” “prin-ter,” “fami-liarity,” “misunders-tanding,” “mi-nimize,” “sa-les,” “me-thod,” “libra-rian,” “mi-spronounced,” “alt-hough” and “bet-ween.”

Word often assumes that the letter “e” indicates the end of a syllable as in “be-come” and causes errors like “Ste-ve,” “the-se,” “cre-dit” and “se-tup.”

Word recognizes that “par” is a common syllable, which leads to “par-chment.”

You may want to override Word’s hyphenation decision with heteronyms—words that are spelled the same way but have two meanings and are pronounced in two ways. Word gives you “min-ute” when you want “mi-nute” and rec-ord even if you want “re-cord.” The automatic hy-phenation “inva-lid” makes it seem like you are writing about someone who is ailing, not an “in-valid” contract. Word 2007, 2010 and 2021 won’t hyphenate either “Po-lish” or “pol-ish.”                       

Word’s automatic hyphenation can give weird results with proper names, such as “Fe-dex,” “Publi-shAmerica” and “Pa-nasonic.”

“Writer” software from Open Office has problems, too. It produced “unders-tanding.”

A book advised, “If you do not use a professional your manuscript will not be perfect. Do not proofread it yourself and declare it perfect.” The book approved “loo-ked,” “winso-me” and “proo-freader.” Ouch.