open circles

When I was a kid and we had to underline and circle various parts of speech on a ditto page, I used to hate the circling part. Because inevitably there would be a word I would need to circle that was hypehnated and carried over to the next line. I would be confused about whether I should make a complete ring around each separate section of the word, or whether I should draw an open-ended circle around each side of the word.

I usually settled on the latter but it never quite felt right. I hated the feeling of the open-ended circle. It mocked the other neatly-ringed and underlined words on my page. It just sat there. Open. Unfinished. A gaping mouth expressing my own uncertainty.