Ok; it’s probably the way it’s laid out; I should have thought before posting, Doah! The outline of the competition was to create a complete story in 26 words as is the same number of letters in the alphabet, the hyphenated words counting as 1 word. The first word of the story had to start with ‘A’ and continue chronologically through to ’z’. The hyphens were allowed at judges discretion and it appeared mine were deemed reasonable.