(In which we find a brief rant about a grammatical pet peeve that only seems to happen in Corrections-Land….)

Doesn’t it frost you when Correctional administrators spell ‘re-integration’ without the hyphen? Mind you, these are educated people.  But they spell the word ‘reintegration.’  What they’re spelling is

reen*tuh*grey*shun

as in the word SKEIN .  Or, possibly:

rain*tuh*grey*shun

as in the word REINDEER.  or, probably:

rine*tuh*grey*shun

like the word STEIN.

The problem is, REEN*tegration, RAIN*tegration, and RINE*tegration are words which do not exist.

Hyphens are important. Add the hyphen, and you get:

REE*IN*TUH*GREY*SHUN

Re-integration.  Only the hyphen makes that possible and correct.

What’s so hard about re-integration?

Actually, we might very well ask that question of the ex-offenders who keep coming back.

They’ll tell you.  Or perhaps they, too, don’t know.