Comments on Word-wise: A Word-wise hodgepodge

Thanks for your comment, Jerry! I never thought m...

2011-10-10T22:22:56.340-04:00

Thanks for your comment, Jerry!

I never thought much about why number hyphenation is the rule, but it seems it would be useful in situations where one number immediately follows another. The hyphen can prevent misreading the numbers as separate when they are intended to be together. Compare these two sentences:

No, Sue isn't really twenty-nine. In fact, she was forty three years ago. (Without the hyphen, we read that Sue is now forty-three.)

vs.

No, Sue isn't really twenty-nine. In fact, she was forty-three years ago. (With the hyphen, we read that forty-three years ago, Sue had her twenty-ninth birthday--that is, she is now 72.)

But I do see your point. That is a truly contrived numbers example the likes of which would happen very seldom (because when it does, no doubt the statistics/numerals rule more often applies than the words rule).

I guess we just chalk the number hyphenation rule up to attempting to make number conform to other hyphenated compounds...although there are many two-word compounds, and plenty of unhyphenated one-word compounds also in the mix.

Hm.

Ain't that just the way of English!

Re: Numbers Round-up That "correct" exa...

2011-09-18T11:51:22.254-04:00

Re: Numbers Round-up

That "correct" example according to AP style bothers me as much today as it did last time number style was discussed so, rather than cite my prejudices again, I propose a new discussion somewhat related.

Jane Straus of GrammarBook.com ( http://www.grammarbook.com/numbers/numbers.asp ) sounds like my 4th grade teacher. My teacher used to say "English is very simple as long as you remember the rules" then proceeded with thousands of rules a youngster could never remember.

My new pet peeve is the need to hyphenate all numbers between 20 and 100 which are not evenly divisible by 10, e.g. forty-three. Why that rule was ever created completely escapes me and I cannot find any authoritative information about the rationale. I propose ridding us of that absurd rule immediately.

2011-09-18T11:49:29.675-04:00

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