Oct 21, 2002
Misplaced hyphens age children
A slightly misplaced hyphen draws to mind a rather weird image of a lot of middle-aged kids with toothy grins. Davies, GM and colleagues published “A randomised controlled trial of the effectiveness of providing free fluoride toothpaste from the age of 12 months on reducing caries in 54-year old children. (Community Dent Health. 2002 Sep;19(3):131-6.)
54-year old children? Eh? When will they grow up?
@Brittany Did you really make that comment? The whole point of the article (which is 8 years old, by the way) was to comment on the poor sub-editing of an item published elsewhere that used a phrase that implied that there were children of 54 years old! Didn’t you actually read my post?
This article is bogus. It makes no sense. Why even post it? There are no 54 year old children. That makes no sense.