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Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Isuppose you and dtb, are traditionalist on the grammatical rules ala Manutius.

"That learned men are well known to disagree on this subject of punctuation is in itself a proof that the knowledge of it, in theory and practice, is of some importance. I myself have learned by experience, that, if ideas that are difficult to understand are properly separated, they become clearer; and that, on the other hand, through defective punctuation, many passages are confused and distorted to such a degree, that sometimes they can with difficulty be understood, or even cannot be understood at all".
Aldus Manutius. Interpungendi ratio, 1566. From the
translation in "Punctuation, its Principles and Practice"
by T. F. and M. F. A. Husband, Routledge, 1905.


But surely the two of you must admit this is a large subject. Whole books have been written about it, and it is still true, as it apparently was four hundred years ago, that no two authorities completely agree. Taste and commonsense are more important than any rules; you put in stops to help your reader to understand you, not to please grammarians. And you should try so to write that he will understand you with a minimum of help of that sort. Fowler says:

It is a sound principle that as few stops should be used as will do the work. . . . Everyone should make up his mind not to depend on his stops. They are to be regarded as devices, not for saving him the trouble of putting his words in the order that naturally gives the required meaning, but for saving his reader the moment or two that would sometimes, without them, be necessarily spent on reading the sentence twice over, once to catch the general arrangement, and again for the details. It may almost be said that what reads wrongly if the stops are removed is radically bad; stops are not to alter the meaning, but merely to show it up. Those who are learning to write should make a practice of putting down all they want to say without stops first. What then, on reading over, naturally arranges itself contrary to the intention should be not punctuated, but altered; and the stops should be as few as possible consistently with the recognised rules.

Perhaps Burger meant no more than to subtly remind dtb of this point? Your dismissal perhaps misses this point also?

My personal preference recognizes the problem of holding strictly to rules that vary amongst the authorities. Fowler, in Modern English Usage, makes an elaborate study of the hyphen. He begins engagingly by pointing out that "superfluous hair-remover" can only mean a hair-remover that nobody wants, and he proceeds to work out a code of rules for the proper use of the hyphen. He admits that the result of following his rules "will often differ from current usage". But, he adds, "that usage is so variable as to be better named caprice". This is the point that you, so close to his namesake, seems to ignore.

The author of the style-book of the Oxford University Press of New York (quoted in Perrin's Writer's Guide) strikes the same note when he says "If you take hyphens seriously you will surely go mad".

I have no intention of taking hyphens seriously. Those who wish to do so I leave to Fowler's eleven columns. If I attempted to lay down any rules I should certainly go astray, and give advice not seemly to be followed. For instance, the general practice of hyphening co when it is attached as a prefix to a word beginning with a vowel has always seemed to me absurd, especially as it leads to such possibilities of misunderstanding as unco-ordinated must present to a Scotsman. If it is objected that ambiguity may result, and readers may be puzzled whether coop is something to put a hen in or a profit-sharing association, this should be removed by a diaeresis (coöp) not a hyphen (co-op). After all, that is what a diaeresis is for.

I will attempt no more than to give a few elementary warnings. (i) Do not use hyphens unnecessarily. If, for instance, you must use overall as an adjective (though this is not recommended) write it like that, and not over-all.
But if you do split a word with a hyphen, make sure you split it at the main break. Though you may write self-conscious, if you wish to have a hyphen in the word, you must not write unself-conscious but un-selfconscious.

(ii) To prevent ambiguity a hyphen should be used in a compound adjective (e.g. well-written, first-class, six-inch, copper-coloured). The omission of a hyphen between government and financed in the following sentence throws the reader on to a false scent:
When Government financed projects in the development areas have been grouped.

But remember that words which form parts of compound adjectives when they precede a noun may stand on their own feet when they follow it, and then they must not be hyphened. "A badly-written letter" needs a hyphen, but "the letter was badly written" does not. There must be hyphens in "the balance-of-payment difficulties" but not in "the difficulties are over the balance of payments".
(iii) Avoid as far as possible the practice of separating a pair of hyphenated words, leaving a hyphen in mid-air. To do this is to misuse the hyphen (whose proper function is to link a word with its immediate neighbour) and it has a slovenly look. The saving of one word cannot justify writing
Where chaplains (whole- or part-time) have been appointed
instead of "where chaplains have been appointed, whole-time or part-time.


But above also, do not be quick to dismiss the good-faith effort to raise as a point of conversation the fact that the "rules" run fluid.

That is so-hot.