UNDERSCORE vs HYPHEN (in text strings)

Today’s tech PSA so clients don’t make me want to jump out the window.

There are many explanations about whether to UNDERSCORES “_” vs HYPHENS “-” in your day to day technical tasks.

• SEO consultants say hyphens are better because it clearly separates words in search engines. (e.g. fancy-cars is read as “fancy cars”, and fancy_cars is read as “fancycars”)
• Python programmers say underscores are better (something_1.py vs something-1.py) because the hyphen means something else in Python.
• UI experts say hyphens look better because your eyes are constantly pulled to the bottom of the string.
• Usability experts say hyphens are easier since you don’t have to hold down the SHIFT key to type them.

I don’t care about any of those explanations. My only gripe is about its copy-paste computer usability.

UNDERSCORES copy-paste easier than HYPHENS

See for yourself. Try double-clicking the follow strings:

• underscores_are_the_best
• hyphens-suck
• See_how_easy_this_is
• See-how-annoying-this-is
• Periods.and#other?punctuation.suck.too!

Do you get my point? See…I touching anywhere from 10-20 websites or web servers per day. And it annoys the hell out of me to see filename and usernames using hyphens.

Unless you need a hyphen for readability or SEO purposes, you should always use underscore for everything that you do!

Please be kind to your developer. Make it easy for them to copy-paste text strings back and forth. You’re making the world a better place. THANK YOU!