“This morning I deleted the hyphen from ‘hell-bound’ and made it one word; this afternoon I redivided it and restored the hyphen.”
The quote is from Edwin Arlington Robinson, an American poet (hugely popular in his day) who died in 1935. But let’s be honest: it could have been any one of us, right?
There’s been a flurry of discussion about hyphenation among online editing groups recently in the wake of changes made this year to the hyphenation guidance in the Associated Press Stylebook online. Thus, it seems as good a time as any to hold the second oh-so-official meeting of the Kingston twig’s Editing Canadian English Book Club, with a focus on Chapter 4, “Compounds and Hyphens.”
The third edition of this flagship Editors Canada publication was published in hardcover by UBC Press in 2016 and as an ebook in 2017, available in all major formats, at the bargain price of $9.99 (or less).
At a 2018 gathering, the twig discussed Chapter 2, “Inclusivity.” The format of using the guide as a jumping-off point for a discussion of the issue in the work of attendees proved so successful that we never got to discussing Chapter 4 as well as we had planned. We meant to schedule it last year, but our guest-speaker dance card (guest speaker dance card?) was so full we couldn’t fit it in!
What with the raging controversy over the AP announcement, we think the time has come.
ECE3 (as it’s affectionately known) is subtitled A Guide for Editors, Writers, and Everyone Who Works with Words. If that includes you, come join us!
Reading the chapter in advance is encouraged but not required. If you have a copy, bring it along. If not, that’s fine; there will be a few extras on hand, and we can project the ebook on our screen. (But, really, at under ten bucks, why not pick one up? See the Editors Canada website for details and links.)
If you’d like to read about the new AP hyphenation guidelines, try this article in Slate; it has a lot more links for anyone who wants to go down the rabbit hole!
Join Us
Ongwanada Resource Centre
191 Portsmouth Avenue
7 to 9 p.m. (doors open at 6:30)
Free for Editors Canada members
$5 for visitors
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Whether or not you come to our gatherings, feel free to join our Facebook group and chat with other Kingston-area editors and assorted word nerds.
Elizabeth d’Anjou and Stephanie Stone
Editors Kingston coordinators