Page 2 from: March 2013

V I E W P O I N T

Manfred Beck
Editor

I love the English language in all its quirkiness. For example, I have regularly debated the merits of
Americans choosing to kill off the ‘u’ in words like

‘rumour’ and ‘colour’ as well as the final ‘i’ in ‘alu-

minium’. Some would say it’s an act of character

assassination, pure and simple.

Spoken English can be even more of a minefield. It

seems perverse, for example, that the letters ‘ough’

can be pronounced eight different ways in a single

sentence: ‘A rough-coated, dough-faced ploughman

strode through the streets of Scarborough, cough-

ing and hiccoughing thoughtfully.’

At Recycling International, we have tried to follow

a decisive course with this occasionally exasperating

but beautiful language. For example, we have

refused to conform to emerging mainstream prac-

tice in a publishing industry that has chosen

increasingly to omit the Mr, Mrs or Ms from peo-

ple’s names and that has declined to use initial

capital letters with their job titles. Attitudes have

certainly changed since my days as a junior report-

er when anyone caught writing ‘managing director’

rather than ‘Managing Director’ would have been

deemed guilty of, well, a capital offence.

But, grudgingly, we have come to accept that use of

Mr/Mrs/Ms at every turn or excessive numbers of

capital letters in long job titles can hamper the flow

for a reader. We have been standing like that famous

Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke – but we

acknowledge that we cannot hold back the inevita-

ble process of change for ever.

We have also been taking a long, hard look at the

hyphen which, for many writers, has long been

about as welcome as a journalist at a board meeting.

Lynne Truss, who wrote the unofficial Bible for

those wanting to understand and celebrate the finer

points of the English language, blames emailing and

‘txt msgs’ for turning proper punctuation into an

endangered species in her number-one best-seller

‘Eats, Shoots & Leaves’; and in one of the later chap-

ters of this hugely entertaining book, she borrows

the following quotation from an old style guide of

the Oxford University Press in New York: ‘If you

take hyphens too seriously, you will surely go mad.’

Over the years, some illustrious individuals have

complained about the demands imposed by the

hyphen police. British prime minister Winston

Churchill once described hyphens as ‘a blemish, to

be avoided wherever possible’, while US president

Woodrow Wilson argued that the hyphen was ‘the

most un-American thing in the world’. Punctuation

can certainly stir the passions: back in 1905, for

example, Bolshevik printers in St Petersburg

demanded to be paid the same rate for setting punc-

tuation marks as for letters – an event credited for

precipitating the first Russian Revolution.

From now on, Recycling International intends to

be a little more sparing in its deployment of

hyphens so as to reflect common usage. It will no

longer appear in such words as Eurozone, emails

and online, and neither will it be used in words

familiar to the recycling sector such as deinking and

reuse. Believe me, I feel guilty about waging war on

poor, defenceless hyphens but, to be fair, left

untreated they can spread as widely as an industry

rumour (or should that be ‘rumor’?).

Even Lynne Truss admits to sensing the hyphen is

‘for the chop’ – a victim of language

evolution. But how can we possibly

exile the hyphen altogether? There

are some words, such as ‘co-operate’

and ‘co-ordinate’, in which the

hyphen serves as a valuable pronun-

ciation guide. And in certain cir-

cumstances, the hyphen would seem to be essential:

there is a chasm of difference in the meanings of, for

example, ‘the 20 odd members of the extended Recy-

cling International team’ and ‘the 20-odd members

of the extended Recycling International team’.

No doubt, the changes we are making will attract

support from some, criticism from others and com-

plete indifference from the vast majority of readers.

But in the unlikely event we find ourselves on the

receiving end of a backlash, I guess we could always

re-vert to type….

It has been written
that the purpose of

punctuation is to
‘tango the reader

into pauses,
inflections,

continuities and
connections that

the spoken line
would convey’. So

please take our
hand as we lead you

in a dance through
some of the small

but potentially
controversial

language-related
changes we are
making to your

magazine….

The hyphen’s last tango?

‘Believe me, I feel guilty
about waging war on poor,

defenceless hyphens.’

RI_2-Viewpoint.indd 3 06-03-13 09:00