Joint Effort

Here's the headline for a news story about corporate underwriting of a vile performer (site possibly not safe for work):

PEPSI SPONSORS MURDER MUSIC SINGER BEENIE MAN IN UGANDA

Now, the headline was intended to be read as "The Pepsi-Cola Company is sponsoring in Uganda a singer, Beenie Man, who sings 'murder music'."

Unfortunately, due to one of the many vagaries of the English language, I read it as meaning "Sponsors of the Pepsi-Cola Company have committed the murder of singer Beenie Man in Uganda." Never mind that the word "music" would be superfluous in that interpretation; that's how I read it. And not only I.

If only the headline writer had thought to incorporate a hyphen! That's what it's for; it is the most potent disambiguator we have in the language. A single hyphen, in "murder-music", would have yoked together those two words and prevented anyone from reading them as a verb and a noun, but instead made them into an adjective, and the sentence would have been absolutely clear and free from any possibility of confusing misinterpretation.

If only.