Dodging a Hyphenated Bullet

It's certainly too early to make jokes at Steve McNair's expense -- and there will probably never be a time where that is acceptable. But an ESPN headline about McNair's unfortunate death really brings to light something that amateur journalists sometimes don't understand: PUNCTUATION MATTERS.



That's a screencap of ESPN's recent headlines. Check out the first one. "McNair slaying investigators await gun tests." Not the most well-written headline I've ever seen, but it gets the job done. Now imagine you were untrained in the art of the hyphen and decided that "McNair" and "slaying" should be joined together.

"McNair-slaying investigators await gun tests."

Technically, a hyphen indicates a compound adjective, so that headline would in other words read: "The investigators that slayed McNair await gun tests."

I just thought that was a strange little headline, and it made me think of so many god-awful student papers that could and probably would badly misconstrue the information.