Punctuation and 40 Virgins: Seriously, People

Though this doesn't equal, to me at least, the significance of my

of last summer, it still raises the importance of those little symbols that help us decipher language. The movie "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" has been causing a punctuational stir since its release by Universal earlier this year. I ignored it at the time, thinking it would go away. But the recent release of the DVD has

.

It really does matter.
Its theatrical release left out the first hyphen, implying that there are 40 one-year-olds chillin' like baby virgins somewhere. (Of course I am aware that the word "Virgin" needs to be plural in order for the argument to really have teeth, but whatever.) The dangers of such irresponsibility are far-reaching. People will learn from this. They will refer to Universal's misuse of the hyphen time and again, treating it as hyphen gospel: "If a big movie studio uses hyphens this way then it must be right." The same people have gone through life thinking that "through" is spelled "thru." Why? Because of drive-thrus [sic]. And how about "nite"? That spelling is everywhere, thanks to marketer laziness. So there is a population of people who think that is correct. I wonder what

would say?