Well, I'm annoyed. No, not at the recent controversies surrounding editors and letters to 'em, but my usual, points of grammar.
One day at work, while perusing the somewhat interesting news items on our intranet, I came across an article reposted from the Business Roundtable. It had to do with the United States' lack of preparedness for a “cyber catastrophe”. As I read on, I saw terms such as “cyber infrastructure”, “cyber security”, “cyber disaster”, and so on.
Now, the last time I looked (dictionary.com), cyber was not a word unto itself. A prefix, yes, and requiring either a hyphen following it: cyber-security, cyber-terrorism; or to be joined to the word following: cybercop, Cybermen, and so forth.
As I read along, my indignation grew to the point that it was all I could do to finish the article. Particularly when I reached this quote:
“If our nation is hit by a cyber Katrina that wipes out large parts of the Internet, there is no coordinated plan in place to restart and restore the Internet.”
What, I might ask, being the pedant I am, is a “cyber Katrina”? Though words brought together to make a compound may be written, at times, without a hyphen, I reiterate that 'cyber' is not a word – unless you use it in its slang sense, generally taken to mean cybersex, and I doubt if that's what the Roundtable had in mind (one never knows, though).
Though, thankfully, we don't appear to have this problem occuring in E2 writeups, I still encourage everyone to revisit the uses of the humble hyphen. Perdue University points the way: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_hyphen.html.
Meanwhile, back at the desk …
Rendering assistance:
Recycled nodegel:
- E2 Nuke Request by eruhgon – Advised noder to take it to the daylogs. Turns out I was mistaken in nuking this one!
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The original Business Roundtable article is located at http://www.businessroundtable.org//newsroom/document.aspx?qs=5936BF807822B0F1AD2428022FB51711FCF50C8.
See if you can make it to the end.