September 7, 2006 Issue

After very little deliberation, I’ve decided to join Bill Campbell and his quest to eradicate the pesky hyphen from the word email. Who needs it? I shudder to think of the countless lost hours of productivity endured by our once great nation’s employers, as employees must stop dead in their tracks to search out the hyphen so that email is spelled correctly. Combining all this wasted time, diligent researchers could probably concoct a viable vaccine for pomposity.

Most of today’s computer typists didn’t take typing by touch in high school, like some of us older folks. Although I took one semester, I never mastered the numbers and symbols found on the highest level of a typewriter or keyboard. To this day, most of my errors in typing come from thinking I actually might know where the seven is located. Hah! Not a chance.

It’s election time and I urge all typing citizens to join us in this quest. Write your representatives in Congress. Get English teachers on our side. I’m not sure just who is responsible for putting it there in the first place, but it is clearly passÈ in this computer savvy world of 2006. Maybe we needed it in the 1990s when electronic stuff was new, but it is no longer needed nor wanted. If text messaging can eliminate whole segments of the English language, must we hang on to this high-handed hyphen in our daily life? I think not.

If we want to eradicate it, all we have to do is convince somebody the hyphen in email constitutes a terrorist threat. Under the guise of saving us from would-be terrorists who would just as soon chop off our heads as look at us, our fearless leaders are getting away with all manner of erosion of civil liberties and privacy issues we once took for granted. I think making me stop and look for the hyphen when I type the word email is just another way for me and everyone else to drop our vigilance. When our vigilance is replaced by complacency, the terrorists win. It’s a proven fact. Ask anyone in the Bush administration. They will tell you so with a straight face.

Katherine Harris might take up the cause because she is for sure against terrorism and I bet there is something bad in the Bible about hyphens too. She probably wants the hyphen out of all words except maybe Bible-thumper, and perhaps make-up.

Just the very look of the word is suspicious. Nothing that starts with an H can be very good…look at all the nasty words that start with it…like homo sapien, homoeroticism, hymen, hooters, hookers, and well, just go to any dictionary and you will be shocked, shocked I tell you, by the sheer number of shady words that start with an H, including the granddaddy of them all, homosexual. Just typing these words makes me feel unclean. Hold on a sec while I grab some of that dry antibacterial stuff and “wash” my hands. Ah, better now.

Really, as a nation, there is nothing we can’t do if we pull together. Are we really gonna allow a hyphen to continue to complicate our busy and important lives? We have some tough challenges to face in the next few years and this one is easy by comparison. Eliminating the hyphen won’t stop the war, but our brave citizens fighting in foreign wars and often communicating with family by email, won’t have to type the hyphen anymore. A small measure of comfort, I’m sure, but better than nothing and they will know we appreciate their service to our once great nation.

Join us please. Go to the website: stophyphenatingnow.org and sign the petition. As soon as we have the minimum one million signatures by registered voters we need, I will personally take the petition to Capital Hill, where all things commence, and see if we can’t put an end to this inhumane practice. Thank you.

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