Today, I am going to channel my inner schoolmarm. Our subject is punctuation, specifically the hyphen.
If you’ve been following the debate over what to name the team that until the end of this season will be called the Warthogs, you know that we have five finalists: The Aviators, the Racers, the Wallbangers, the Rhinos and the Dash. We’ll talk about the first four in a bit, but I wanted to write about the fifth offering from the perspective of someone who makes their living from the precision of words and grammar. I hate it. Here’s why:
The Dash is supposed to a play on the little bar that connects Winston with Salem in our fair city’s name. There’s even a downtown booster group for young folks called the Dash. I get it. It’s hip. It speaks of movement, and a certain Bondlike devil-may-care attitude. It even gives a tip of the cap to our heritage as a conjoined city. Just one problem. Winston and Salem aren’t separated by a dash. They’re separated by a hyphen. What’s the difference? A hyphen joins compound words: good-tempered, double-jointed, Winston-Salem, etc. A dash is more of a punctuation mark. It’s used to set off thoughts in the manner of a comma—although some of us don’t like these clauses—but with slightly heavier emphasis. You can tell they are different characters because the computer keyboard tells you so. Word software lets you create dashes, essentially extended hyphens. This blogging software doesn’t, so I have to use two hyphens —.
Now, you don’t have to be a marketing genius to realize that as a team name, the Winston-Salem Hyphen or Hyphens is dead in the water. It sounds too frumpy.
As we noted in a story on Sunday, the hyphen is causing Winston-Salem all sorts of problems in a digital era. But the answer isn’t to call it a dash.
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from
I don’t like The Dash because I don’t like concept team names. The Heat? The Magic? The Jazz? The BARF.
I get your issue with the dash/hyphen, but I wonder if you are also a purist regarding O/0. When giving out a telephone number with a zero in it, do you say zero, or do you say O?
I say zero, but I absolutely think I am in the minority. I also say dash, though, when spelling my married surname aloud. (It’s easier, frankly.)
Wanted to also point out that when I took a dash poll almost two years ago (for much the same reason as that article discussed), the dash/hyphen was overwhelmingly in favor with local residents. I removed the poll a long time ago, but I think it was like 90% pro/10% against.
http://lifeinforsyth.blogspot.com/2006/08/question-of-burning-importance.html
And you are not alone in your dash/hyphen consternation.
I say zero with phone numbers and O with street addresses. How’s that for inconsistency?
Let the praises be. And may heaven help you, if you try to explain that there is En Dash and an Em Dash and that the difference actually matters to some of us.
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