Is it fine to hyphenate a phrasal verb?

[-Carlos-]

In my eyes a hyphen will anchor - make the thought tidier - the sentence; and make it a more "comfortable" read than if were left without the hyphen.

Can adding a hyphen make the phrasal verb illegal (grammatically speaking)?


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I am currently reading a Neal Stephenson novel and I came across this sentence:

Daniel was like one of those Papist fanatics who, after they died, were found to've been secretly wearing hair-skirts underneath their satin vestments.

I've never seen the word "to've" before and I wanted to know if it's a true word.

Thanks!


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[dude]

"To've" isn't a recognized contraction but when talking about slang, especially in literature, whether it's a "real" word or not is irrelevant. As long as you understand that it's the combination of "to" and "have" and can imagine it sounding like "to've" when he says it, then that's all that matters.

Hyphens on the other hand I've really only seen the need for when joining two words that need to be shown to the reader as absolutely not exclusive from each other. As in, if you said "that was a well thought out description." "Thought-out" tells the reader not confuse the intention of the word "out" with the following word, "description." If it were "that was a well thought out-description" then the meaning of the sentence changed completely.

Putting hyphens in the middle of a sentence - like this - seems completely subjective to me as to whether it's right or wrong. Clearly, I could have just used commas or parentheses instead. I do however like it when the author is consistent in whatever he/she chooses to do in that regard.

 

[Eva]

Technically, what you're talking about is a dash. A hyphen joins two words; a dash separates phrases. Your sentence should be punctuated like this:

In my eyes a hyphen will anchor--make the thought tidier--the sentence.

However, that's very awkward. A verb and its object shouldn't be separated so abruptly. You could try something like this instead:

In my eyes, a dash will anchor the sentence, making the thought tidier.

Even that rule can be broken, however:

In my eyes, a dash will anchor--or perhaps tidy--the sentence.

While your original sentence may have been awkward, it wasn't actually illegal under the laws of grammar. A dash can be used absolutely anywhere--it's the most flexible punctuation there is, since anything can be interrupted. My housemate, for example--the poster-child for ADHD--speaks almost entirely in dashes. "I have to--oh hey, look at that--go to the store."

As for to've, well, we probably say "to've" more than "to have," so it's acceptable. After all, you c'n 'tract 'most an'thin' if it's casual speech 'r slang 'r di'lect.

In Mr. Stephenson's case, I think he did it to help the rhythm of the sentence. "To have" would have given it too many unaccented beats:

were FOUND to have been SECretly WEARing...

were FOUND to've been SECretly WEARing...

It's crisper.

Hope that helps!

 

[-Carlos-]

yeah. Thank you.