Patricia, what a wonderful response on why the words breast and feeding
should be merged into one word!  Several months ago I attempted to convince
our health agency public relations department to remove the hyphen
in our WIC breastfeeding promotion materials.  Besides the idea that merging
the words implies a relationship and portrays breastfeeding as "normal" not
set apart, I also pointed out that USDA and ILCA and nearly every book,
journal, etc. spells breastfeeding as one word.  And that hyphenating would
also make our materials inconsistent with all of the WIC "Best Start"
promotional campaign materials we were using.  But no luck.  The decision
rendered was that because Webster's Dictionary spells it with a hyphen, our
agency will continue to hyphenate the word.  Any chance we could get
Webster's to reevaluate their spelling of "breast-feeding"?


Cathy Carothers, IBCLC