• orphiebaby@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    It’s “first-hand”. English is stupid. Sometimes two words don’t become compound. Sometimes they do become compound and they’re just grafted together, like in German. And sometimes you use a hyphen. I’m really good at writing and I can’t always keep this shit straight.

    • can@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      Hyphens tend to drop over time. When’s the last time you saw someone refer to “e-mail”?

      • orphiebaby@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        That’s a different kind of use for hyphen though. The use of hyphen that I’m talking about is actually flexible, used as-needed to turn any given multiple words into a single adjective, adverb, noun, etc.

        Also, never get your English punctuation (or other) patterns from JRPGs, nor from popular usage on the internet. I’m not saying literacy is lowering, but I will say that people with poor literacy use the internet more than ever, and bad patterns emerge.