Bye-bye to the Hyphen

Text messaging, chatting and emailing have all contributed to a condensing of words and sentences. For various reasons, real or otherwise, it is a fact that the English language is changing because of these new tools.

Now, the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is listing phrases sans hyphens, according to the Telegraph on-line (hyphen intended!) which recently posted this about the hyphen:

It’s small, flat and a useful piece of punctuation. The hyphen, according to the latest edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, is becoming extinct, a victim of the text message and the email.

The sixth edition of the dictionary has knocked the hyphens out of 16,000 words, many of them two-word compound nouns.

Fig-leaf is now fig leaf, pot-belly is now pot belly, pigeon-hole has finally achieved one-word status and leap-frog is now leapfrog.

The reason, says Angus Stevenson, editor of the dictionary, is that we no longer have time to reach over to the hyphen key.

Is this acceptable, or should we continue to spend more time typing and being aware of our spelling, preserving the proper spellings.

Phighting Phishing With Fishing

Phishing (or Spoofing) is the new cybercrime, and with many of us doing daily transactions using sensitive information like passwords, ID’s and the exchange of money, we need to know, and be more aware of what to look for if we suspect a spoof or phish email.

For most of us that spend a lot of time on the web, we know what to look for. For example, if you get an urgent email from your bank asking you to update your personal information or risk closure of your account, call your bank on the phone and verify that this was a bank generated email.

If you click the urgent-update-personal-info-link and arrive upon a web page that looks very real, check for the secure icon (usually a padlock) on the page. Check also that the URL has the https in it, and that it does not contain a series of IP numbers (29.321.45.787 for example).

But now, here is a game called Anti-Phishing Phil developed by members of the CMU Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory. Carnegie Mellon researchers say there’s evidence that Anti-Phishing Phil works better than bland anti-phishing tutorials. I think it helps cross age lines, which is great. This is fun, educational and addictive.

You are a fish that must eat worms, and as you approach a worm, it will show a web URL and you must decide to eat it or reject it. If you eat a Phishing URL, it will alert you to the fact that it is not a good one. Good ones produce a Yummy, which is reassuring.

Direct link to the game is here.

By the way, Earlier this year Carnegie Mellon University released a game that asked children to serve as “cyber cadets” protecting the Web.