Do topics not accept hyphenated words in questions?

Crap, it took hyph-enated, now I look stupid. Is it the capital letters fluther has a problem with? It still won’t accept either MId-Atlantic or Mid-atlantic on the other question.

It’s not the hyphen per se that’s causing the issue. It’s because we used to have multiple ‘mid-atlantic’ topics due to people spelling/capitalizing/hyphenating it all different ways. All but one got disabled when we did the topic editing, and the one that remained was Mid Atlantic (without a hyphen). Which is kind of weird, because Mid-Atlantic States (with the hyphen) is also an existing topic. Not terribly consistent, huh? Once a topic has been disabled, it won’t be accepted in the topics field again. Sorry for the confusion!

@augustlan No confusion, now that you’ve explained it to me. Topics aren’t my strong suit and it was just my bad luck to have Mid-Atlantic be my first hyphenated topic, maybe. I’m not even sure if it should be hyphenated. Hyphenations aren’t one of my strong suits either. And, as Oscar Wilde said,: “Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

I’m not sure if it should be hyphenated, either. I see it both ways. Hyphenation isn’t my strong suit, either. :)

@lillycoyote

I like that Oscar Wilde quote you mentioned. It also reminds me of one of my favorite ones from Ralph Waldo Emerson which expresses a similar thought, albeit a bit more precisely :

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

Not all consistency is necessarily bad, in and of itself. He delineates it with the description of “foolish consistency”.

I think in some instances a bit of useful consistency can provide more clarity, especiallyl when dealing with computers. (or any other so-called “smart machines”) which lack the capacity of interpretation or intent which are more characteristic of human beings.