diff --git a/scripts/port-census.py b/scripts/port-census.py
index 8ea1f66..3c38846 100755
--- a/scripts/port-census.py
+++ b/scripts/port-census.py
@@ -25,8 +25,14 @@ def toks(line):
             out.append(n)
     # Identifiers, flags, paths and backticked spans are the facts worth
     # tracking; ordinary prose words are not — they reword on every rewrite.
-    out += [w for w in re.findall(r"[A-Za-z][\w./:-]{7,}", line)
-            if re.search(r"[\d_.:/-]", w) or w.isupper()]
+    # A hyphen alone is not evidence of an identifier (`long-standing`), so a
+    # dashed word counts only with two hyphens (`frank-tts-engine`) or with a
+    # digit, dot, slash, colon or `--` inside it.
+    for w in re.findall(r"[A-Za-z][\w./:-]{7,}", line):
+        core = w.strip(".,;:!?\"')]")
+        if (core.startswith("--") or core.isupper()
+                or re.search(r"[\d_/:.]", core) or core.count("-") >= 2):
+            out.append(core)
     out += [s.strip() for s in re.findall(r"`([^`]+)`", line) if len(s) > 3]
     return out