From the course: Ninja Writing: The Four Levels of Writing Mastery

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Bonus ninja tactics: Obsolete hyphens

Bonus ninja tactics: Obsolete hyphens

From the course: Ninja Writing: The Four Levels of Writing Mastery

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Bonus ninja tactics: Obsolete hyphens

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- Okay, another very, very quick bonus tip. It's about hyphens. Hyphens are those little symbols between words that we see, between words. And, you know, the thing to recognize about hyphens is that they're very, very subjected to fashion. And they change, their use changes over time. And you'll notice that newspapers, over time what happens is words which were traditionally hyphenated start to lose the hyphen. And they become one word, often. And, pay attention to this. Follow newspapers, follow sort-of contemporary journals and things, and look for the patterns. Because it is, as I say, a fashion thing, okay? Nowadays, people might say in newspapers things like surefire tactic, where the word surefire, in the past, may have been sure hyphen fire tactic. And now it's just surefire tactic. Or decadelong marriage, you know? I know in the Wall Street Journal, decadelong is now written as one word. Flatmate, which, in the past, might've been flat dash mate, is now one word, flatmate, in…

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