Such misinterpretation, even though deliberate, can be avoided by joining ‘English’ and ‘speaking’ with a hyphen.
The employer wanted an English-speaking man to work for him.
Lack of hyphenation is one of the commonest errors writers commit.
Hyphenation, like some other punctuation-marks, does not have any rigid rules governing its use. The first and the most important rule regarding punctuation (including hyphenation) is ‘sense’ and not ‘ritual’. As long as it makes sense to punctuate, go ahead and punctuate. If ritualistic practice demands punctuation but there appears to be no sense in it, just don’t punctuate.
Some more examples are discussed before certain guidelines regarding hyphenation are listed out.
An advertisement, in a leading daily, asked the readers:
Is your hospital pollution free?
Of course, the advertisement did not mean to ask the reader whether they had to pay for or got free of cost, the hospital pollution (ie., pollution from the hospital).
The advertisement should have been:
Is your hospital pollution-free?
(Is your hospital free of pollution?)
Just riddling
How does Moses make tea?
Hebrews it.
A vendor selling sweet potatoes cannot be called as ‘a sweet potato seller’ without proper hyphenation. Mischievous interpretation or a wrong pause can make it ‘a sweet potato-seller’ (ie., a potato seller who is cute).
The correct format is ‘a sweet-potato seller’ meaning a seller of sweet potatoes. Normal practice does not require ‘sweet potatoes’ to be hyphenated. But, in this case, it makes sense to hyphenate the same.
There was this headline in another leading newspaper.
No more drinking water supply problems.
Without hyphenation, we can interpret it as
From now on, no one shall drink ‘water supply problems’, but can drink something else like juice, milk, etc.
It would have been appropriate to write the above sentence as
No more drinking-water-supply problems.
In the above examples, we saw how lack of hyphenation can twist the meaning of a sentence depending on how we read the same. Sometimes, it so happens that hyphenation, when wrongly applied, can also give out a meaning different from what the writer intends.
Once a teacher scolded a student who was more interested in disco rather than in his studies, “Forget your disco. It does not fetch you
Just, let this not happen to you
Some writers write to forget. Some forget to write. - Mokokoma Mokhonoana
any marks in the exams. Remember our great scientists, inventors, etc. They spent much of their time in libraries, laboratories, in fields, deserts, icy regions and the like. They came up with inventions, innovations and discoveries. It enriched their knowledge. Why don’t you, too, do the same? Do you
understand?”
The student nodded his head, “Yes, ma’am.”
But the teacher was not convinced. She asked him to write, on the board, whatever she said and went away. When she came and saw what was written on the board, she was shocked. Because of wrong hyphenation (inserting hyphen at the wrong place), the meaning of the sentence the student wrote was exactly opposite of what the teacher wanted to convey.
The student, for want of space on the board that was already cluttered with a lot of information, had written the sentence that had extended to the second line. One word that was the last one in the first line could not be accommodated completely. It had to be split with the use of a hyphen. But, the student had split the word wrongly as follows:
The teacher said that disco -very often enriches knowledge.
In another instance, a chief guest, who was ready to start the class,
Just makes sense
Punctuation marks are like road-signs; without them, we just may get lost.
- Nanette L. Avery
was waiting in the principal’s chamber. The principal asked the class leader to announce about the chief guest’s class and to ask the students to keep silent. Leader’s efforts to communicate the principal’s instructions failed as the students were busy talking, running around here and there and playing in the class. So, the leader thought of an idea. He wrote, on the board, what the principal said. Students’ attention was drawn to the board. They read the instruction and went to their respective seats and sat down quietly.
When the chief guest, along with the principal, walked into the class and read what was written on the board, he almost fainted.
Know why?
The leader, like in our previous example, had to split a word for want of space. And, he had split the word wrongly by using a hyphen. He had written
Please be quiet.
The chief guest is ready to beg -in the class.
Readers are requested to send such humorous errors related to hyphenation (or the lack of it). Please quote the source, if possible,. If feasible, a book of such sentences shall be compiled.
Now, let us come to the general guidelines about using or avoiding wrong usage of hyphens.
Just give it a try
If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.
― Toni Morrison
Normally, all two-word combinations, associated with human body, are single words, and not hyphenated words or two separate words.
Examples are eyelid, footwear, headache, toothpaste, etc.
Words that jointly describe another word are hyphenated. Examples are city-based author, officer-related candidate, trouble-free service, and so on.
Words like ‘short circuit’ are not hyphenated when used as a noun, but are, when used as a verb.
Some newspapers hyphenate adverb-verb combinations, while others don’t. For example, ‘recently established shop’ is also written as ‘recently-established shop’. The second option is more appropriate.
Readers are requested to send similar errors, regarding hyphenation, for the proposed compilation.
Just inspiring
I cannot live without books
― Thomas Jefferson
Syntax is the arrangement of words to make well-structured sentences to tell what is meant to be told. Wrong positioning of words in a sentence could lead to, often, hilarious meanings.
This is one error that can give different meanings by just shuffling of words. This is another of the commonest errors many reporters, copywriters, authors, etc. make. Go through brochures, newsletters, newspapers and magazines. You will come cross plenty of syntax errors.
In one of the leading dailies, a photo was published. The photo showed government employees agitating in front of the General Post Office (GPO) building. According to the report, they were demanding that the bonus, they were entitled to, be paid in cash and in no other form like shares, cheques, bonds, etc.
The caption of the photo read:
Government employees agitating that they be paid bonus in cash in front of the GPO building.
Did the government employees want their bonus (in cash) to be paid in front of the GPO building, and not in their offices? Very funny!
The caption should have been
Government employees, agitating in front of the GPO building, demanding that they be paid bonus in cash.
Just beautiful
If language is a flower, then without grammar, it will not smell.
- Purushottam Muley