Hyphenation

Comments (Archived):

1. I’ll chime in with an energetic “don’t care”.Always glad to help ;-p

   1. Ha. That’s been my mantra too

2. I never noticed & it doesn’t bother me.

   1. Same. But I can see how it can be an issue on may be a smaller screen size.

      1. But I read AVC on mobile 80% of the time. I think my smartphone removes the hyphenation automatically. Look at this example that was in the tweet and above. It’s a screen shot of what I see, and it’s not hyphenated. https://uploads.disquscdn.c…

         1. I agree, I read on my mobile too (iOS) and haven’t experienced that yet 🙂

   2. https://uploads.disquscdn.c…

3. So much else to go OCD about. Agree with William.

4. I don’t think it matters. To turn it off “what is it for?” Does it create value in your work to turn it off?

5. A solid – “I don’t care” here. But, I was curious why it happens. WP apparently has it as the default, who knew? You can remove it by adding to you CSS.Here is one person’s solution.https://en.forums.wordpress…

6. This really is not an issue for me, never noticed it and it does not bother me.

7. So that’s how one gets Fred to promote them: complain about him in public.And the following song’s title sums up the appropriate response well:”Who gives a f about an Oxford comma!”https://youtu.be/P_i1xk07o4g

   1. I feel sorry for Ezra. Those lyrics are depressing and he should care more about the language with which he crafts his livelihood. 😛

8. Never noticed

9. is this the kind of thing that helps to make successful people successful, thinking about such minutiae? if it is then i’m all for it. if it isn’t then i’d rather you blog about something else.

   1. “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all…” Drucker

   2. However, if he wrote it and the majority of us came back and mentioned we have the same problem and it’s annoying, he’d do something about it. So there’s nothing wrong in throwing out the question.

      1. if it were really that annoying (majority) the point would be expressed and right here, the place where the problem occurs, maybe 🙂

         1. True enough. But I think there are also a lot of people who come here and observe who never say anything.

10. I did notice in my Macbook Pro, but doesn’t bother me. If you want to remove, just look for the following piece of code in your CSS and remove all the hyphens entries. As it is inside a media query, it just show up for some devices.@media screen and (min-width: 726px)style.css?ver=1396376028:1.content p, .content li { text-align: justify; -webkit-hyphens: auto; -moz-hyphens: auto; -ms-hyphens: auto; hyphens: auto; -ms-hyphenate-limit-lines: 1; -webkit-hyphenate-limit-lines: 1; hyphenate-limit-lines: 1;}https://uploads.disquscdn.c…

    1. Can’t seem to find this code. I may need to call in some WP experts

       1. @fredwilson:disqus see my recent comment. You don’t have to find the code you just have to override it with my snippet above.

          1. thanks

       2. Appearance -> Editor -> style.css :)“`/* Remove automatic hyphenation */.site-content article { word-wrap: normal; -webkit-hyphens: none; -moz-hyphens: none; hyphens: none; }.widget-area .widget { word-wrap: normal; -webkit-hyphens: none; -moz-hyphens: none; hyphens: none; }“`

          1. thanks Kirsten

11. I read this blog off a Droid and have never noticed the hyphenation issue. Perhaps it’s device-specific.

    1. yup. i’m pretty sure the device is a factor. i can see hyphenation on my mac, but not on the Xiaomi.

12. At first I thought this post was about hypertension; a worthy topic.Then I thought it was about some new app called hyphenation.Now I see this post is about nothing.Have a low pressure day, y’all.

    1. the Seinfeld post

       1. Surely you meant…The Sein-feld post

       2. Whooo are these hyphens ? Or a Larry David “you woke me up to blog about hyphens?? are you fucking nuts?”

    2. Re : “Now I see this post is about nothing”This post is about Peak Zen Detachment. How to not care about the things that you did not notice. And to also not care that you did not notice.

       1. I didn’t care until I noticed your comment

          1. I was really hoping that noticing the comment would make you not care.

       2. Yesssssssssss

    3. HypheNation

13. Complainers: get a life. Fred: slow-day?

    1. Easter with my parents. So yes

14. Glad to report that I am unaware of this.

15. 1. No2. No3. YesI’d say in a perfect world turn it off. It is a bit odd if I think about it, but I’ve never really noticed it or care that deeply

16. Also never noticed, but glad to know Fred listens to the fans.

17. For the record they don’t show up in the RSS feed. I usually read the post there then flip over here to read comments. I’ve never noticed the issue before.

18. When I first read the title, I thought we were going to discuss using or not using hyphens in certain words like:- Start-up or startup – Crypto-currency or cryptocurrency- Re-engineering or reengineering – product-to-market-fit or product to market fitEtc…

19. I started using that grammar app you recommended a few weeks ago. Using it, I find a lot more words I use become hyphenated. Happy Easter to everyone if you celebrate.

20. it’s quite funny. a short form micro blog platform is used to critique the grammar of a long form (is there a limit?) blog platform.

21. Fred it would personally annoy me because it looks sloppy but I thought there was a template setting in WP that fixed it

22. 1 yes 2 yes 3 yesYour code is set to journalistic mode — simiply set to left justified instead of whatever the hell it’s called (lol so archaic, I don’t even remember the name of it)

23. Never noticed it. But here’s a good tutorial on where to find it and change it if you want:http://www.zaposphere.com/r…

24. I expect the same adherence to punctuation correctness in your blog that I have come to expect and count on in your email and tweets.

    1. Ha. Illiteracy FTW

25. The “problem” is only on the web (not when reading within email), and may only be certain browsers. It’s a funny little bug, not a big deal, and I would agree with the people saying it depends on level of effort. FWIW here’s a post about the issue which may solve the problem with a quick copy/paste: http://bit.ly/2oDFR6D

    1. Thanks!

26. I personally don’t like them because it is harder to read. Your mind has to put more effort into completing the words that are broken onto two lines. And to fix this requires just a few lines of code. So, it’s a 2 minute fix that should be very easy to make. Just add this code to any CSS file or add <style> </style> tags around it and add it to any HTML template and this will be fixed.* { -webkit-hyphens: none !important; -moz-hyphens: none !important; -ms-hyphens: none !important; hyphens: none !important; -ms-hyphenate-limit-lines: 0 !important; -webkit-hyphenate-limit-lines: 0 !important; hyphenate-limit-lines: 0 !important;}The “!important” rule tells the browser to give it precedence over the other rules so you don’t have to dig into the code to figure out where to change your styles. Instead, just override your styles with the ones above.

27. I did notice it, but I’d say don’t bother figuring out how to turn it off. Not worth the trouble.

28. Information over form everyday. However, retro use of text is cool in my estimation. We still read letters from Jefferson, Washington and Adams. They and everyone in their time would capitalize for emphasis.

29. Answers:1) Yes, I noticed the hyphenation.2) Yes, it IS a little off-putting. I’ve not lost any sleep over it but it is a tiny bit annoying, especially since there are grammar rules for how and where to hyphenate but most automated hyphenation just hyphenates wherever the heck it pleases. The reason those rules exist is so you don’t start rea…ding a word and sto…ping in weird arbitrary places. Suffice it to say that this was never objectionable enough to proactively complain about but, since you asked, then I’d be remiss not to tell you the truth. Frankly, the problem is in CSS which handles hyphenation incorrectly. I wonder if DISQUS might apply some engineering to work around this problem and hyphenate according to real grammar rules. But then again, with automation and modern day “Word Wrap” hyphenation of any kind is sort of obsolete.3) Yes, I would encourage you to remove it. Again, I never would have initiated this topic but I have noticed and I think it would be better if it was fixed. As you speculated, it is not a WordPress setting per se (although perhaps it should be). The issue comes down to how CSS is worked to style your web pages.HOW TO REMOVE HYPHENATION IN WORDPRESS(Please note the intentional redundancy to make sure this solution works for all browser types and devices.)Go to Appearance > Customize > CSS.Add this to the CSS for your blog posts:article .entry-content {-moz-hyphens: none;-ms-hyphens: none;-webkit-hyphens: none;hyphens: none;word-wrap: normal;}Do that and the hyphens will be gone for good.Hope you’re well, Fred, and thanks for everything.

30. Reading on my phone (android) there are no hanging hyphens. (I made up that term.)Personally prefer not to see a word broken up but I probably have abandonment issues.

31. As a former Wall St anal-yst (pun intended): the very first hyphen, in “Wal-Mart,” is wrong, according to a note by Walmart itself:> Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is the legal trade name of the corporation. The name ‘Walmart,’ expressed as one word and without punctuation, is a trademark of the company and is used analogously to describe the company and its stores. Use the trade name when it is necessary to identify the legal entity, such as when reporting financial results, litigation or corporate governance.

32. I-personally-don’t-have-a-problem-with-hypens.

33. Turn it off, hyphenation is a paper saving technique that is inappropriate digitally and adds cognitive load. The group that say “I don’t care” just don’t notice. The group that say “keep it” are printing out your blog and want save a few pennies when they print it.

    1. A smart friend reminded me that one reason this might feel awkward digitally is there does not also appear to be any justification on the lines in addition to the hyphenation. Two spaces or one after a period type of debate maybe? Also without a fixed column width it becomes dynamic punctuation, which is also annoying

34. My vote, if it’s not too late, is that you should “fix” it if it’s not too much hassle. Handling line breaks is important.

35. Code looks after the things

36. I feel hyphenation is not required

37. Well-done

38. Agree and typically you listen to your customers (and people who read this blog are ‘customers’) or risk alienating or offending them. It doesn’t seem particularly businesslike or scientific to post a question on a Sunday and make a decision based on the small group of people who care to take the time to give their opinion that are even reading on that day.That said:a) It doesn’t bother me and I have somewhat of a background in graphic arts and have done typesetting as well.b) The full scope of the issue hasn’t been defined we don’t know how many people it actually impacts. [1]c) Fixing it definitely depends on how much effort is needed to diagnose the problem and who is going to do the work. For what Fred uses this blog for it very well might not be worth the effort.[1] So this is a bit like politicians making a decision on a topic based on the amount of noise that some particularly vocal constituents raise because they either protest, jam the phone lines or send a bunch of emails. The question is what percentage of your voters really think the same way? Why are you listening only to the vocal minority?

39. Is hyphenation punctuation or just a style/formatting issue?

40. Pro Oxford comma, but he’s using hyphens correctly. The issue is a webfonts one, and I don’t think you can just turn it off via css

41. Words should contain meaning.Really in my theory character contains different meangs by virtue of their position.character chemistry is important. Once word all othermeanings disappear.

42. Grammarly is helping with the it’s and its but I thought hyphenation was just a matter of preference and not punctuation per se

43. Actually, an n-dash is distinct from a hyphen, and slightly longer in most typefaces. Hyphen vs. n-dash vs. m-dash: – – —Otherwise your post draws the distinction between hyphen and dash nicely.There’s variation between style manuals about the use of n- vs. m-, but typically in the US, in formal typography:”• Em-dash is double the length of en-dash and is used without spacing on either sides unlike in en-dash that requires spacing on both ends.• En-dash is used to denote a range as in numbers whereas em-dash is used to give a pause or as an afterthought in between words in a sentence.”http://www.differencebetwee…(In casual writing you see all kinds of variations, of course.)Personally, I generally think hyphenated line-breaks are better to have than not. Update: however I read pretty much exclusively in RSS on mobile, so perhaps the implementation of the automated hyphenation is poor in CSS.

44. CHARLIE RIGHT.WORDS JUST CODE FOR HUMANS.USE WRONG CODE, GET WRONG RESULT.

45. Semantico_syntactic integrated code is right candidate

46. the thing that grammarly is good for me is with commas. I don’t accept everything but my comma usage is much better.you need to nudge disqus as they are the one that it doesn’t work with. even works within wordpress.

47. Words are far more fluid than code. Code doesn’t have semantic meaning.

48. MAYBE NOT TO YOU.

49. Granted, I’m not a robot dinosaur…