The Sentence-Clarifying Hyphen

Inspired by Pico Iyer's "In Praise of the Humble Comma," here is an ode to the Hyphen

The use of the hyphen is surprisingly hush-hush in many academic circles. It has the second-rate reputation of being useful only to absent-minded students and worn-out professors. in fact, the very opposite is true!

 

Numerous times, the individuals with strong wills have petitioned the teachers who have bodies that are able to completely remove this symbol that has been worn out (On another note, they would refuse to be called "strong-willed," call the teachers "able-bodied," or admit that the "worn-out" hyphen needed removal). Well, I say that any teachers that re-sign that petition should resign from their posts!

 

There are others who accuse hyphens of dumbing down words to a child-like simplicity. However, this reputation is unfairly given because empty-headed people have carelessly abused the hyphen by inserting it where it has no place.

 

Therefore, this far-flung conclusion is not warranted. Hyphens, when used correctly, are forerunners of clarity. Only well-to-do, narrow-minded know-hows lack the follow-through to notice the difference between a forest with five-hundred-year-old trees, five hundred-year-old trees, and five hundred year-old trees.

 

Cynical anti-hyphen proponents want to reform English grammar... or do they mean re-form? 

Author's Note

This is meant to be a fun play on words- enjoy!

Reviews

[Tex]

very nice. I recommend you use the edit feature to undo some of the line breaks. For some reason
some of your lines look like this one. with a strange break in the middle of it.

that said...this is a smart and clever write. i thoroughly enjoyed it. well done again... I am becoming an Emily fan...

[Emily]

Thank you for catching that! This piece was originally hand-written and I had purposefully written my words to spill over onto the next line in order to showcase another use of a hyphen. I was trying to replicate that with the breaks, but it did not work. I think I will just take out that aspect of this piece in the understanding that sometimes creative ideas must be cut out to preserve coherency and clarity.
Thank you for reviewing me! I am honored to have you as a fan, and I hold a similarly growing respect for you and your writing.
Thanks again!

[Tex]

:-)

[Guilt]

This put a smirk on my face. I think this is the best argument I have ever seen. You do the hyphen proud.

- Guilt

[jacob erin-cilberto]

i think they mean re-form.

the language is so abused any-more what used to be right no-longer is and what used to be right is now-acceptable.
such a mess we have made of every-thing semantically.

Being an English teacher, i really appreciated this poem---very-much.

and your use of hypens in it...

thanks for the smile.

jacob

[Frieda P]

lol, I love this, made me smile and I'm a re-formed Emily fan :)

[Inda]

This had me smiling all the way. I love your manipulation of language and your vocabulary here, very straight-forward like all this is fact.
It's smart and funny!

[.]

Makes me rather self conscious...
There-fore, hence-thus I will just compliment you lavishly on a funny and intelligent write - hoping you don't notice any empty-headed hyphen abuse going on here ..

[Emily]

Haha! I see what you did there.... ;)
Thank you for your hilarious review! I'm glad that you appreciate my some-what strange sense of humor.