Dec 13 2007
Suspense in the World of Hyphens
Just when you’re thinking grammar and punctuation are getting a bit boring, along comes the suspensive hyphen. Your hopes rise. You ask yourself, “Can this finally be the flashy little number that makes English usage exciting?”
Sorry. You’ll have to look to overtly suggestive adjectives to do that. But there is something quite nice about suspensive hyphenation. Review the following sentences and decide which is correct:
1. I signed up for a 2 to 4 year stint in the army.
2. I signed up for a 2 to 4-year stint in the army.
3. I signed up for a 2-4 year stint in the army.
4. I signed up for a 2-year to 4-year stint in the army.
5. I signed up for a 2- to 4-year stint in the army.
If you chose #5, you’re right. What’s cool about #5 in a twisted way is that it looks so wrong … so incomplete. That space after the “2-” seems criminally vacant. But it’s dead-on correct. The other nice thing is that it makes your writing more concise and avoids repetition.
There’s a bonus, too. Every time you use a suspensive hyphen, someone will tell you you’ve made a mistake, and you’ll have the thrill of calling that person a literary ass.
For those of us who get breathless when we see a semicolon used properly, that is reason enough to go on living.
