THE BIRTH OF THE HYPHEN
The humble hyphen (‐) — that small bridge between words — was born in the ancient world, when writing was a continuous river of letters with no spaces to breathe in.
Around the 2nd century BCE, the Greek grammarian Dionysius Thrax, often credited as one of the earliest linguists, introduced a system to bring rhythm and clarity to text. Among his innovations was the idea of connecting words that belonged together — marking their union with a subtle stroke above or between them.
This mark, called the “hypén” (from the Greek hypo en, meaning “under one”), symbolized togetherness: two parts read as one breath, one thought. Over centuries, the sign descended from manuscripts to the printed page, settling between letters as the modern hyphen.
It is both a separator and a link, a reminder that language, like thought, is made of connections — fragile lines binding fragments into meaning.
