A thing about hyphens

[glitterboy1]

.... I have one. No, not that sort of thing. Just a strong preference for them to be in their appointed place, and a slight twinge when someone writes "a small scale factory" when, in fact, the place has nothing to do with the manufacture of weighing machines. Look, I'm an ISFJ; what do you want? Anyway, I recently had a chance to indulge my love of the little beasties, scattering them freely over page after page, debating with myself over whether one was, strictly, required in this or that case. This was enormous fun, though marred slightly by the realisation that I was probably consuming a significant proportion of the national hyphen reserve, and that, just maybe, I was a little obsessed. Sadly, this has now been borne out by the Economist Style Guide, which, on its page about the hyphen, quotes the OUP style manual:
"If you take hyphens seriously, you will surely go mad"