Is anal-retentive hyphenated?

I have work somewhat under control, so I feel I deserve to vent publicly about what terrible writers doctors make.

There, I feel better already.

But this puzzles me: one author neatly and consistently formatted all his 124 references, identifying the second author of each source by initials only.

There are a lot of style guides out there, and more than two perfectly valid ways of styling reference lists, but I can't imagine what this author might've read to lead him to invest the time to meticulously replace names in a given position with initials.

This author is a smart cookie, no doubt, having published articles, chapters, and books. But this is weirdly channeled obsessive-compulsive behaviour. Just plain weird.