Hyphens generally make multiple words into one anyway. There's not really multiple hyphens the way there's separate quotes and apostrophes.
On 7:01pm, Thu, Jun 4, 2015 Leo Broukhis <l...@mailcom.com> wrote: > Along the same lines, we might need a MODIFIER LETTER HYPHEN, because, for > example, the work ack-ack isn't decomposable into words, or even morphemes, > "ack" and "ack". > > Leo > > On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 6:31 PM, David Starner <prosfil...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >> On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 2:38 PM Markus Scherer <markus....@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >>> "don’t" is a contraction of two words, it is not one word. >>> >> >> But as he points out, it's not a contraction of don and t; it is, at >> best, a contraction of do and n't. It's eliding, not punctuating. In the >> comments, he also brings up the examples of "Don’t you mind?" being okay >> but not *"Do not you mind?", and "fo’c’sle". >> >> > You can't use simple regular expressions to find word boundaries. >> >> Who uses _simple_ regular expressions? You can't use any code to reliably >> find word boundaries in English, and that's a problem. >> > >