“Every generation hyphenates the way it wants to”

From The Simpsons episode “The Bart of War” (May 18, 2003), aired again (again) last night. Bart and Milhouse are in trouble:

Bart: Please, don’t call our parents.

Chief Wiggum: I’m afraid I have to for hijinks like these. Heh. Hijinks. Funny word. Three dotted letters in a row.

Eddie: Is it hyphenated?

Chief Wiggum: It used to be. Back in the bad old days, you know. Of course every generation hyphenates the way it wants to. Then there’s ★NSYNC. Hah. What the hell is that? Jump in any time, Eddie, these are good topics.

I don’t know how Chief Wiggum spells ★NSYNC, but I know how ★NSYNC spells ★NSYNC. (I looked it up.) But I am unwilling to ruin line spacing by superscripting the star. Like so:

^★NSYNC

I also don’t know if Chief Wiggum italicizes words used as words. But I do.

Related reading
All OCA punctuation posts (Pinboard)
The Hammacher Schlemmer crazy making hyphen shortage problem
Living on hyphens
Mr. Hyphen and Mr. Faulkner
One more from Mr. Hyphen

[Mary Norris’s Between You & Me (2015) and Edward N. Teall’s Meet Mr. Hyphen (1937) got me noticing hyphens and talk of hyphens.]