Job Discussion Forums

[Sweetsee]

1) The empty-handed artist...

2) Your empty handed armies...


Why is one hyphenated and not the other, and who can give me the low-down on hyphens like I'm a 10-year-old?

[abufletcher]

I assume you're not actually trying to explain such things to a 10 year old.

These are the sorts of questions which really are best answered by telling students "We just do it that way, it's like a tradition."

Any serious answer would need to be delving into the history of English lexicology and how things like cupboard (with its present pronunciation) evolved from cup board through cup-board.

[abufletcher]

And here's a concordance set for "empty" in which we find two instances of "empty-handed."

and blankets. The Council offered Oxfam an empty ladies'hairdressing shop in the centre of
Ritter, a German archaeologist working in the Empty Quarter, the Rubh Al Khali, and who has
it with a soft towel before you use it. [p] 2. Empty your bladder and wash your hands. [p] 3.
might explain why, inside, the club is half-empty. Where are all the girls? The fanzines (from
left Cole and Janet poorer, wiser and with an empty shell of a house which they could transform
Thursday I went in a pub at 8 30 and it was empty. The barmaid was playing the one-armed
population gets on the train, and the place is empty until they all come back in the evening. And
s urgent need for foreign aid, he returned home empty-handed from the world's second most powerful
eyes looked hurt. [p] I pushed Lewis into an empty visitation chamber and then into an antique
spot. If we enlarged, we would end up with empty space, and a mortgage hanging over our heads.
with him. Either way, the result's the same. An empty house." [p] So where does Glover come in?"
room was full of clutter, and the ceiling was empty, smooth. It would be good to walk around
strange doings of Major Karnes. I went by that empty store last night," Jupiter reported, `and
the television cameras would focus on a lot of empty seats. He need not have worried, for Wilson's
structure and apparent meaning to an otherwise empty life. As you can see, these reasons are all
nine years old. He felt alone. It was a very empty feeling and he could not sleep. That was it!
drunks or dead bodies. They threaten you with empty faces or inscrutable masks: skulls, vampires,
lights, a kitchen door, a circular table, an empty Bols bottle, a blue cake tin, overhead
it incorporates a circular plastic table, an empty 1950s bar, some leaflets, photographs of
Russell Jenkins [/b] [p] CHURCH leaders emerged empty-handed last night from a meeting with
mood at lunch today. He made straight for an empty side table so there would be no danger of our
Police had followed a convoy of 200 cars to an empty factory at Great Stukeley, near Huntingdon,
under pressure to spend more money buying up empty properties and handing them over for rental.
and Ballesteros added: `They could still be empty-handed on Sunday. The Americans are not the
in the scriptures. No wonder the pews are empty. [p] J R Higgins [p] Ipswich, Suffolk [p]
would. Horseman was scared. The territory was empty, and a fugitive's dream for hiding out. His
re-entered the restaurant, which was almost empty, and ordered a steak, fried potatoes, coffee,
smell of water was everywhere. He passed the empty auction barn, then a stretch of soggy fields,
I was a dropout anyway." He held his hands out, empty. `Before it was fashionable. You can tell by
antiaircraft guns. As the enemy laced the empty sky with tracers, two battalions from the 2nd
to live was still there across from the church, empty windows gaping, an ugly burnt-out hulk. Like
East Coast ports and returned home unprofitably empty. Now their westbound backhauls sped toward
Hale almost sits down in Minnie's place, the empty chair that ominously starts rocking is
afraid. An unknown path opens up before us, an empty trail shuts behind. Snow closes over our
much like a zoo anymore. Most of the cages are empty, filled with feces, garbage and animal
to wrap the body, so a man brings them two empty gunnysacks. Earlier, these bags carried
times to". In set 1 the `unread" area is left empty to indicate time to come: in Set 2 it
or in the weather for example are not empty in a sense they're not just subjects to
[F01] Yeah. [M01] [ZGY] [F01] Yeah. [M01] large empty areas with trees and so on. [F01]
in there and they just left their old shops empty. So nothing All this promise [M01] But [ZF1]

[abufletcher]

BTW, for those of you not used to look at concordances, just scan the middle of each line to find the instance of "empty." Don't try to read this as some huge disjointed paragraph.

[abufletcher]

Not that in both cases it occurs in phrases as in "returned empty-handed" and "emerged empty-handed" and that it is NOT followed by a noun as in the two examples you gave.

The best advice I can give native-speaker English teachers is this: Learn not to trust your intuition (too far) <-- message edited re Schwa's reply.

[schwa]

[abufletcher]

From my work with popular magazines I've also gotten the feeling that editors are leaning towards less punctuation in particular fewer commas.

I'm not sure I'm ready for compounds like "emptyhanded" just quite yet though. Pretty soon we'll be building together phrases like the Germans: "Huehneaustellungseintrittkarte"

[Perpetual Traveller]

I was always taught that the use of the hyphen in such a case is to create emphasis. Empty-handed giving a more forceful feel than empty handed.

PT

[Sweetsee]

Thank you everyone. These two phrases appear in the same song and I was just wondering. Thank you. Just style, then?