What is a “Hyphen” you wonder? Wonder no longer, for I will tell you the origin story of the Hyphen.

Once upon a time, a person who possessed wide ranging expertise and interests would have been called a Renaissance Person (I know, it's technically a Renaissance Man but that isn't inclusive enough and we don't live in the 16th century). Back in the day, Renaissance people were highly valued members of society and treated like royalty. The modern equivalent of a Renaissance Person is polymath, but modern polymath's don't usually become celebrities (our version of royalty) and they often struggle to define themselves for others, especially when searching for a job, which rarely aligns with their unique combination of expertise. Not mention that the word itself comes across as robotic, which creates distance from an actual human being.

In order to elevate the contributions of a modern polymath, we need a new word that connects to a real person, so I have started to use Hyphen, instead of 'polymath'. The term Hyphen originated by looking through the curriculum vitae of a typical polymath that usually contains a variety professions which are connected by hyphenation. The goal of adopting and turning the word Hyphen into a pronoun is to elevate their importance and link Hyphens to real people via a CV. Thus, a Hyphen is a person whose LinkedIn profile connects a plethora of roles through hyphenation like: botanist-dancer-astro physicist-blogger-mechanic. The hyphenation becomes the connective tissue that links each of those experiences together and is where the value of a Hyphen can be realized.