Quote:
Originally Posted by ericshliao
As to the rule of puncatuation, I have an example for you to think about the difference of language in their nature. When using a typewriter to print a letter, it's inevitable that some hyphens are needed to break a long word in the end of a line. Thanks to modern font rendering technology, we don't see hyphens often now, but they do exist in books published many years ago.
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Another reason for that is that most 19th century novels were originally published in weekly or monthly magazines, and printed in narrow magazine columns, which inevitably resulted in a great many hyphenated words, which were retained even when the work was subsequenty reprinted as a book.