As readers of Sprachgefuhl know, I favor the compound hyphen. It turns out that I’m not alone. The great Paul R. Martin, a longtime editor at the Wall Street Journal who served as the paper’s final authority on language, was also a big fan. Here’s how William Safire, who wrote the “On Language” column in the New York Times Magazine, described Martin’s meticulousness:
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“Who is it in the press that calls on me?” asks Julius Caesar in the second scene of the first act of Shakespeare’s play.
It is Paul R. Martin, assistant managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, known to his colleagues as the Great Hyphenator. He commends me for defending the use of the hyphen in kitchen-table issue “as befits a compound adjective modifying the noun issue,” but then takes me to task for using health care reform with the compound adjective health care naked of hyphenation.
All Americans deserve health care, but does all adjectival health care deserve a hyphen? Usagists disagree.
Mr. Martin does a sprightly flier on usage for the Journal, called Style & Substance, along the lines of the occasional Winners & Sinners that used to be put out by usageers at the New York Times. (I’m just trying out usageer, as an alternative to usagist; it has a three-musketeers quality, and usage diktats take courage and loyalty to a tight little band.)
In it, he asks us which of the following compound-modifier constructions (thereby using compound-modifier as a compound modifier for the first time in the history of grammar) should be hyphenated.
Mr. Martin’s brain-teasing list: “mutual fund manager; hard line faction; health care program [we know that one]; fast food chain; drug price increases; credit card operations; page one article; variable annuity buyers; tax deferred annuities [you can tell what paper he works for]; real estate agent; high school student; natural gas pipeline.”
His answer: “All of the above.”
He’s a hyphenation purist; I’m not. With health care reform, I’ll go along with New York Times style that calls for no hyphens, as in sales tax bill, when the meaning is clear without them. I disagree with the tendency of many Times editors to forgo the hyphen whenever nouns are used together as a compound modifier. Use no hyphen in health care reform, but because it adds to clarity, put a hyphen in kitchen-table issue. A hyphen is a tool. We own the tools; the tools don’t own us.
But what about Mr. Martin’s title, assistant managing editor? Should that have a hyphen? He says no: “I assist the managing editor; I don’t assistant-manage the editor.”
Why the Wall Street Journal Embraces the Compound Hyphen
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The problem with leaving health care unhyphenated is that when used as a modifier, health care often comes sandwiched between other modifiers. How are readers to parse a sentence like "a broad women's health care delivery initiative?" What, exactly, would be broad: the delivery of women's health care, or efforts on behalf of an initiative to deliver women's health care?
ReplyDeleteLandmines like that one one reason that when used as an adjective, health care should be written as one word: healthcare.
As for "assistant managing editor": I've never seen a style guide that called for hyphenating a compound modifier of the sequence adjective + present participle + noun; it admits of only one meaning.
I'm squarely with Mr. Martin: I would hyphenate wherever he would.
More than that, I would use an en dash in "African–American relations" if I meant "relations between Africa and America. If I use a hyphen, readers will think I mean "relations with African Americans."