Moved from DAK to Pedants' Place (chas49)
Perhaps it's just me but I sense a rise in using a hyphen in punctuation. Here are just two of several from today's Telegraph.
My English language education was poor, in fact I don't recall being taught grammar at all. So I am not in a position to judge whether using hyphens in this way is correct.
Any cunning linguists out there?
'This may give our politicians time to work out which [EU laws] are no longer needed, and certainly back in the Nineties I was almost weekly reporting on just how daft many of those EU directives were — particularly in the absurdly damaging way they were applied by our own civil servants.'
Christopher Booker
'Eurocrats are ashamed of their history – so they cannot forgive Britain for being proud of its own'
Janet Daley