Grammatical oddity

[msmemory_archive]

Something I've seen a few places lately, which really makes me twitch: the hyphenated contraction. I'm talking about did-n't, could-n't, and so forth. Surely not a legitimate usage! Ugh.

Comments

[kfitzwarin.livejournal.com]

The times I've seen that was around a line break (which seems icky but not unreasonable) or a place where there had been a line break at some point. (There are a couple of books I've read recently where there had obviously been some sort of layout change, and so there are lots of hyphenations mid-line....)