We probably all know what it’s like to get frustrated over an item of punctuation, but most of us don’t get the chance to pass a law banning it. In France, they’ve done just that.
Hyphens are notoriously tricky to put in their place. For the last six years, the French had more scope for confusion than the rest of us. Since 2004, the double hyphen has been used to indicate a newly coined double-barrelled name, bestowed on babies taking both their mother’s and father’s surname.
Now, not only has the double-hyphen been outlawed, it has actually been declared ‘un-French’.
Generally, when we inadvertently misuse punctuation, the worst that might be said is that we’ve let ourselves, possibly our company, down. Still, better that than the whole country.
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