Job Discussion Forums

[Henry_Cowell]

Hopeless and clueless. Why am I not surprised?

[Chancellor]

[fluffyhamster]

Henry's over in the corner talking to himself and giggling, whilst Chancellor here is still waving an 'Avoid Ambiguity!' placard and quoting from every available usage manual.

Look, nobody here is opposed to the hypen: as SJ said, 'English-language teacher' is not incorrect; it is just unusual. That there is an option in this matter is attested by Truss, Fowler, 'The Guardian Style Book', and the 'Cambridge Grammar of the English Language'.

The problem is that you two guys are INSISTING that the hyphen be used there OR THERE WILL BE AMBIGUITY (as to whether the guy is 'English and teaches another language besides English') - adding the hyphen unfortunately brings with it the need for your "explanation" why it "had to" be used, but the reasoning then given presents a most unlikely reading of the situation (actually, I'd say it is an almost pathological one), as both I then SJ have argued. (If you just said that the hyphen made the 'English language' into more of a subject/unit/modifier - even though it is the minority choice among writers - and left it at that, there'd be little or no argument).

There is of course nothing ultimately that we can do or it seems say to stop you from inflicting such silliness upon those students unfortunate enough to be in your punctuation "masterclass" (you'll probably make a point of introducing 'English language teacher' from now on, at least to foreign learners, eh!), but your extreme interpretations were bound to be challenged when they appeared on relatively educated and informed public discussion forums such as this one.

[Henry_Cowell]

[fluffyhamster]

Yes, yes, Henry (and Chancellor), I think we've all quite gathered that hyphens will help avoid ambiguity generally, and are something that editors especially will need to be up on and prepared to wrestle with. I think we are all also well past the point of caring whether somebody hyphenates 'English language teacher' or not. The only thing I must still insist on saying is, with respect, don't presume to tell anyone what NOT using the hyphen there "will" or "might" mean or signal; there simply isn't anything ambiguous about the unhyphenated version (which is precisely why the majority don't bother hyphenating it. Duh!).

In those instances where there is genuine ambiguity in writing, yes, most people can figure out the intended meaning, somehow manage to suppress whatever slight indignation they may feel (if indeed they do feel any at all), smile, and then simply get on with the rest of their day.

[Stephen Jones]

Not one of the sources you give, Chancellor, states that the hyphen is obligatory in English language teacher.

The Carnegie-Mellon site states in general, your quote from the Medical Site refers to prefixes which are not relevant here, the Blue Book has one statement that is partially correct (I would say there is much more disagreement on the use of the comma), and one which is asinine, since the problem is not learning the rules but deciding where they apply.

Style Guides differ as to how much hyphenation they recommend, but all of them admit that the avoidance of ambiguity is the deciding factor in the case before us. And I do not believe there is sufficient possiblity of ambiguity in the phrase 'English language teacher" to spoil the flow with a hyphen, just as , unlike one of your sources, I do not believe that the collocation "ill educated child", has is commonly, or even rarely, used to describe a child of high academic attainments at present suffering from sickness, though I would hyphenate the phrase for other reasons.

The fact that every publsiher feels obliged to have his own style book makes it clear that we are dealing with different alternatives. If making a decision that you disagree with consists of dumbing down the language then you and Henry would have to accept that every publisher in existence is involved in a vast conspiracy to dumb down the language.

Just to give you one example Maxwell-Sweet state email not e-mail yet according to Bill Walsh, copy editor at the Washington Post, insisits that missing out the hyphen is an abomination with no precedence in English word formation.

[Henry_Cowell]

What is Stephen Jones talking about? Here's a direct quote from the Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual (the primary reference for American newspapers):

AVOID AMBIGUITY
Use a hyphen whenever ambiguity would result if it were omitted: "The president will speak to small-business men." (businessmen normally is one word. But The president will speak to small businessmen is unclear.)

The principal style guide for American book publishing is the Chicago Manual of Style. It has a lengthy table about hyphen usage to prevent ambiguity.

The two principal textbooks and manuals for American copyeditors are The Copyeditor's Handbook (Einsohn) and Copyediting (Judd). Both include lengthy sections on when to use hyphens to avoid ambiguity.

Note that none of these books use the terms "obligatory" or "mandatory." However, editors are trained to examine sentences for possible ambiguities, as in the following NON-ambiguous examples that don't require hyphens (from Einsohn):

income tax refund
real estate agent
mass transit route
high school student
post office regulations
baby boom generation
social service providers

But Einsohn explicitly lists the following as instances in which editors should use hyphens:

end-user manual
hard-sell tactics
short-story writer
free-market system
free-trade agreement
real-number theory
secret-police organization

Note finally that American usage is much more prescriptive about hyphenation than British usage. That's why so many of the ambiguous examples I