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Thursday, 26 May 2011

Rampaging hyp-hens: a rant.

Over the years I've spent a lot of time being confused.

C S Lewis's Prince Caspian started it. Someone at some point in the book (I think it was Prince Caspian) says 'we're a sort of rebel-
lion'.

It took me thirty-five years to work out what a rebel-lion was. 
I was reminded of this when I was reading a national newspaper recently and suddenly came across the mysterious expression an-
yone.
As in an-yone could do it.

In the same paper (admittedly it was The Guardian, but even so) I also found the musical and lovely, though very puzzling, viola-
tion.




There was the extremely disturbing and strangely eerie  per-
meate, too.

What next, I wonder? Will I bump into someone being standof-
fish?

Or perhaps be amazed by a dazzling display of loud pant-
echnics?

Cower in horror at the advance of a darkly threatening ant-
agonist?

Or a terrifying snake trying to escape from its box so it can slit-
her away?

Hyp-hens, eh?

Sometimes I wonder if writers actually want to be understood!

Word To Use Today: hyphen. This word comes to us from the Greek word huphen, meaning together. 

1 comment:

  1. For years and years a friend of mine though the name Hermione was pronounced HER- MY- WON, on account of seeing it written like this:
    Hermi-one.

    ReplyDelete

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