According to the editor of the latest dictionary from the Oxford lexicographic shipyard, the hyphen is making a dash for extinction. The hyphen is used only half as much as it was even ten years ago. Can it survive in the age of the text msg, and other forms of short(-)hand that ignore capitals and punctuation marks? For this relief, much thanks?

Chaos still reigns in the decision of when and whether to hyphenate. Writers, editors and printers have different rules and anarchies. Americans try to hyphenate according to pronunciation. The English by word-roots. Would it not make life easier to call the whole-thing off. You would lose the crossword clue “Mark that appears in sesquipedalianism — (6)”. But deleting the hyphen would remove one of the pit-falls of journalism. Sorry. Pitfalls. At the end of a line is it triumph-ant (British) or trium-phant (American)? Is it teaset, tea set or tea-set? La-dylike or lad-ylike. Dashed tricky.

These are puzzling questions, but not beyond all conjecture. Like the rest of punctuation, hyphens were made for man, not man for hyphenation. They are meant to make our lives easier, not harder. Especially the lives of readers. As many words are published every hour as Johannes Gensfleisch Gutenberg and Aldus Manutius printed in their lifetimes. Most of them are trivial or nonsense. We are an age of self-publishers, not readers. Anything that checks the understanding of a reader, trying to grab a strap to hang on to in the Tube, loses a reader.

So let us begin at first-time and first-hand first principles. In the beginning, scribes did not leave gaps between words. This makes reading in papyrology and epigraphy slow work. Eventually scribes invented word divisions. When a word fell short of the right-hand margin, they filled in the space with a decoration, to keep their text shipshape. If a long word threatened to overrun, they either invented an abbreviation, or carried a few letters over to the next line. Since the latter solution made reading more difficult, the monks put two ticks in the margin to alert the reader. Gutenberg invented the equals sign for this printer’s red light. And his original double dash was then reduced to our hyphen.

Printers used to decide where to break words at the end of a line. Being learned men with an ancient mystery, they tried to break words and insert hyphens in places that did not make the reader stumble asterisk over chip. Computers and humanoids called hyphenologists now decide where to put hyphens. And although their numerological skills are measureless to pre-cyberspace man, they lack the wit and judgment of the old printers. So they break words in silly places. Leg-end. Loo-kalike.

Mans-laughter. Berib-boned. Rear-ranged. Antic-ipate. Male-volence. Be-ached.

Computers may have cast out some of the old printer’s devils. But they have been replaced by a thousand gremlins that have not yet been brought to book.

One of my computers, called Herpes (or possibly Hermes), refuses to hyphenate a word with an umlaut or other accent on or in it. So it will hyphenate Ger-hard at the end of a line. But it cannot cope with Schröder. You can instruct Herpes: “Do not hyphenate this word” — Control, shift and hyphen with cursor on the word. But it is difficult to remember this up to the wire and under the lash of deadline. And if you dehyphenate an ugly break, by Sod’s Law it will introduce six devil hyphens farther down the column.

Away from bad computer breaks, the hyphen serves purposes to help the reader. It joins the two halves of an adjectival phrase. Extra-territorial rights are different from extra territorial rights. Thirty-odd people are different from thirty odd people. Extra-marital sex is different from extra marital sex.

Hyphens avoid ambiguity by separating a prefix from the main verb. A footballer who resigns is doing something different from a footballer who re-signs. You re-cover your umbrella in order to recover from your hacking corff.

The hyphen also joins a prefix to a common name — pre-Darwinian. It also avoids unfamiliar collocations of letters. Specialised journals print seaurchin and radioisotope. Unspecialist readers (I) trip up.

The humble hyphen separates two similar consonant or vowel sounds, in order to make understanding plain — Sword-dance, co-opt. It represents a common second element in all but the last word of a list — two-, three- or fourfold. It adds gaiety to the snobbery of the English upper classes. Please allow Sir Ranulf Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes his hyphens, in case we suppose that there are more than one of him pushing a pea with his nose to the South Pole. Lady Caroline Jemima Temple- Nugent-Chandos-Brydges-Grenville (1858-1946) holds the hyphenonomastic record.

Let us not even attempt the hyphens of composite language such as German — Hot- ten-tot-ten-po-ten-ta-ten- tan-ten-to-ten-at-ten-ta-ter (Death assassin of the aunt of the Hottentot potentate). Let us dash our hyphens carefully, in order to follow logic and pronunciation, and to help the reader.

When there are signs of Teutonic hyphen-diar-hoea, simplify. Instead of a nuclear-weapon-free world, change to “a world free of nuclear weapons”.

There! Make what you can of that piece, Master Herpes.