In Praise of the Humble Hyphen
If she were still alive, my grandmother Mildred Joyce Webster Cole would have been 101 years old today. I remember eating in a little diner with her after church in her adopted home of Reno, Nevada when I was not yet double-digits of age. As I recall, she had taken me to the store to purchase a card for my mother. We sat together at a booth in the diner while I wrote what I wanted to say. I misjudged the space available, and wouldn’t you know it I ran out of room to write an entire word in the space there was. Grandmother put me at ease and introduced me to a trick that I remember to this day, which was the use of a hyphen. If you ever run out of room to write what you want to say, you can add one of those dashes, preferably at a break between consonants, and everything will be fine. It has been a little while since I posted anything on social media because I have been preoccupied with all the transformations going on around me. The world has been changing so rapidly that I ...