By now many of you interested in grammar and word usage have read about the new sixth edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, which has managed to eliminate some 16,000 hyphens out of 600,000 entries. That small, horizontal mark of punctuation has become dispensable in the modern world of text messaging.

Decades ago, when I first started paying attention to hyphens, the National Geographic freely distributed them in text. Almost every compound modifier except for a few well-established terms, such as real estate, required a hyphen. Even a phrase such as “the black-and-white kitten” demanded hyphens despite the fact that with a singular kitten there could be absolutely no confusion about the cat’s color. With more than one cat, it is not so clear: “Black-and-white kittens” means each cat is a mix of black and white; “black and white kittens” means some are white, others are black.

In the 1970s we had passionate debates about hyphenating high-school student; we certainly would not want our readers to think the pages of National Geographic referred to students high on drugs, and so for years we used a hyphen. We used a hyphen in resting-place, because that’s what Webster’s unabridged did. Of course, if you looked up the term in the collegiate edition, you wouldn’t find it, leading you to think it should be two words. I finally decreed we would eliminate the hyphen in both terms, using them both as two words.

More recently we took the plunge on goodbye, and then on online, email, and website, closing them up as one word. And we’ve consistently cut back on hyphens in compound modifiers, using them only when we feel there might be confusion—and, wow, can that be subjective. One general rule is that if a compound modifier is listed in Webster’s as a noun, it is familiar enough to readers to be used as a modifier without a hyphen. We especially do not hyphenate compound animal names: polar bear habitat, killer whale prey, bald eagle nests.

That brings me to an article in the New York Times, which points out the distinction between a “slippery-eel salesman” and a “slippery eel salesman.” The first sells slippery eels; the second is a slightly dishonest seller of eels. See the power of that one small speck of type—at least for those who understand hyphens.

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