2min chapter

Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing cover image

The Medieval Origins of the @ Symbol. Hyphens in Dual-Heritage Terms. Pitch.

Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

CHAPTER

Introduction

In 2019, the AP style book changed its recommendation from using hyphens in dual heritage terms. Henry Fuhrman campaigned for the hyphenation change in newsrooms across America. The influential copy editor recently died soon after a cancer diagnosis at age 65. He argued that those hyphens serve to divide even as they're meant to connect.

00:00
Speaker 1
Grandma Girl here. I'm in Jan Fogarty and you can think of me as your friendly guide to the English language. We talk about writing, history, roles, and cool stuff. Today, we're going to talk about hyphens and the origin of the at symbol. But before we start, I do want to mention that this is episode 900 of the podcast 900 episodes. I know a few of you have been with me since the beginning and thank you so much and welcome to everyone who's joined along the way. I didn't have the wherewithal to make a big deal out of the milestone this week, but it's pretty amazing and I did want to acknowledge it a little bit. And I did look at the stats and we are at well over 100 million lifetime downloads, which feels unreal. It blows my mind. Anyway, I am incredibly grateful to have had the amazing job of putting together this podcast 900 times. So thank you. In 2019, the AP style book changed its recommendation from using hyphens in dual heritage terms, like African American and Asian American, to not using hyphens. And the reason I decided to talk about it today is that the influential copy editor from the Los Angeles Times who advocated for the change, Henry Fuhrman, recently died soon after a cancer diagnosis at age 65, which led to some great retrospectives on his work. And frankly, I hadn't realized that I hadn't covered it before. Henry campaigned for the hyphenation change in newsrooms across America and the AP style book credited a 2018 essay he wrote for the conscious style guide with influencing their decision to make the change. Early in his essay, Henry noted that the hyphen was long considered a logical tool for showing dual heritage when relevant, but made a strong case based on the history of hyphenation and grammatical usage that it would be better and more accurate to leave it out. Here's part of his argument in his own words, quote, those hyphens serve to divide even as they're meant to connect.

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