What's with all the hyphens anymore?

No sentence was made better using three or four dependent clauses, which necessitate commas.
One new one I've seen among all the Kool Kid miLLeNNial hipster writers: the colon.
For some it seems to be a dependency issue, or a weak crutch made of pine.

 

"You, whose moniker includes a nod to flatulence, can kiss my royal keester, the part of my body I sometimes call my arse." -- Henry James

 

I've read so much 19th-century wind I don't even flinch. The ornamentality is charming once it stops being aggravating.
Long ago, when I was a young man in the business, I'd heard the New York Times mandated a lede could not be longer than 30 words.

 

For sure, Henry James is a slog at times, but once you get used to it, well, there's a reason he's called The Master.

Samuel Johnson is another whose prose is somewhat unwieldy. But again, worth the effort. That kind of writing, though, would probably never get out of the slush pile now.

 

Johnson just loved words and how they fit. He was a lexicographer as much as he was anything else.
One thing about these guys anyone can learn from - they drive the verbs hard, really crush them.
It's like what Derek Jacobi said about playing Shakespeare.

 

Oh, I don’t know about hat.

 

This is one I always struggle with....

sixth most efficient

Where do you put the hyphen, if any?

 

sixth-most modifies efficient

sixth most-efficient person in the room modifies person

I think. Shit, now I've confused myself.

 

My introductory journalism writing instructor at Indiana once told us, "if you have a colon or a semicolon in your story, it's too complex. Put a period in there."

Said instructor, on the first day of class, also wrote "THAT" in big letters on the whiteboard and followed with "almost every time it's used, it doesn't need to be there, so don't use it." My high school journalism students get that lesson, too.

 

The teacher said that that that that that student wrote was wrong.