I'm going to hang my head in shame and publicly admit that I've been a hyphenation addict!

Please, stop laughing!

It all stems from a form of dyslexia that makes me lose confidence in the spelling of words. I look at the word and KNOW it's spelt right, another glance, and I'm not sure, third glance and I'm already exploring possible alternative spellings. Word processing usually keeps me right, but hyphenation is a whole different ball game.

For a start UK and US hyphenation rules are different. In the UK often there's no hyphenation and in the US the opposite applies. In the UK we 'smush' words together to make new bigger words, in the US you allow them to stay separate with a hyphen. Very confusing!

Anyway, a big apology to those that have 'puzzled' their way through my 'strangely formatted' text - if only they'd been brave enough to mention it - you know who you are :) but with the confusion in systems, maybe they thought I was right!

Anyway, from now on every hyphen gets checked in the final edit! And I am going systematically through my already published work to sort the problem and make sure it complies with UK convention. Sorry US folks, you'll just need to be tolerant.

Ahhhh, I feel better already!

Alistair.