Removing a Hyphen Won’t Stop Anti-Semitism
Symbolic gestures aren’t what’s needed in the fight against anti-Jewish bigotry.
If you’ve read enough about anti-Jewish bigotry, you’ve probably noticed that no one can agree how to spell it: Is it anti-Semitism or antisemitism? Regular readers of The Atlantic know that this publication uses the hyphenated version. But before I came here, I wrote for a Jewish outlet that removed the hyphen. And just this past week, The New York that it had quietly revised its style guide to do the same. So does the spelling really matter? Having covered anti-Jewish prejudice for a decade, I’m not convinced that it does.
